Trinity
by Roll
Summary: ...because it has to start somewhere. Epic: Batman-Superman-Wonder Woman
1. Because it has to start somewhere

Disclaimer: This may shock you, but I do not own the DC characters. (I know, I know, it'll take some getting over) I hesitate to even say the story belongs to me, because so much of the plot is lifted from DC history. But come on DC/WB, don't steal my idea. You know it's wrong.  
  
Foreword:  
  
_/Alright kids, I first started piecing this story together back when there were rumors for a Batman vs Superman movie floating around (still are). Anyway, I've always liked the idea, but after reading a script review for Wolfgang Peterson's Batman vs. Superman and several fan scripts, I found they were consistently lacking. So, after an absurd amount of plotting, I decided to take things into my own semi-capable hands, and since I have absolutely no script writing familiarity, I'm writing it out in good ol' story format. Kind of like a novelization for a movie that doesn't exist and stands no chance of ever existing, if that makes any sense. I know that's not the way a person should write, but meh.  
  
Anyway, if this story ever becomes anything, maybe I'll write more of an introduction, but I think it's really pompous to write all the whys and hows for a piece of fan fiction. Anyway, hope ya like it.-Roll/_  
  
Trinity  
  
Chapter 1: ...Because it has to start somewhere.  
  
It was a dark, cold and oddly calm night for a city like Gotham. Thick autumn clouds and smog hung in the sky, concealing the stars under a blanket of grey from the already glimmering city. It seemed so peaceful; thousands of twinkling lamps and lights futilely attempting to brighten the permanently grim landscape, an ocean of steel and glass as far as the eye could see. The waters were still, the sky was empty, and there was not a single siren or alarm ringing throughout the twisting labyrinth of streets and sky scrapers. It was unsettling. Peace was a forgotten concept.  
  
A trio of sailors sat atop crates on a rickety boat that swayed back and forth atop the water in one of Gotham's dilapidated harbors. Two played cards while one nervously read a newspaper, with a big bold headline reading 'MONSTER TERRORIZES GOTHAM UNDERWORLD' and a shot of a blurry figure atop one of the city's rooftops that was just as likely a chimney as it was the mythical Batman.  
  
"Got any Jokers?" the small thug asked his larger counterpart, a bemused frown etched on his overly-serious face. The third thug only looked to the sky worriedly, thinking he'd heard something.  
  
"Go Fish." The large thug answered with an arrogant, unjustifiably self-assured grin.  
  
"I'm tired of this stupid kids' game." The smaller thug grunted, throwing his cards down onto the make-shift table. Leaning back, his arms crossed in a huff, he looked over to the thug intently reading the newspaper. "Again with those stupid 'Bat' stories, Jack?" He called to the nervous thug, who jumped in fright at the sound of the man's voice. "You know they're just city hall propaganda, right?"  
  
"They're not stupid, and he's real!" The nervous thug exclaimed as soon as he eased his nerves. "Jonny Gobs told me The Bat came after him one night in an alley after he been making his rounds! He's got this lady's purse right, and he says the Bat came down and ripped him to shreds! Nearly tore his freakin' arm off!"  
  
"Please, Gobs is a junkie off his ass!" The small thug quipped, shaking his head and getting a chuckle from the largest thug. "Probably just hallucinated the whole thing tripping on his way down..."  
  
"Still..." Jack backed down slightly, a man lacking in confidence. "Its not just Jonny...everybody's talkin'...everybody's scared."  
  
"What are you lameass clowns babbling about?" A condescending, confident voice called to the thugs, who snapped to attention when they saw the voice's owner standing in the door frame.  
  
It was a man of average height and a lean build, covered from head to toe in a warrior's armor of red, yellow and grey. He seemed to be his own walking arsenal: protected by kevlar at every inch, and a red scope over his right eye to ensure his already perfect aim wouldn't fail. A set of magnums grafted to his wrists were his favourite and most obvious weapons, but littered all along his body were various other arms grafted to his outfit. Emblazoned on his chest was a red and white cross-hair, if only to taunt those who faced him down, however brief it may be.  
  
"H-Hey Floyd..." The smaller thug greeted somewhat uneasily, though not nearly as skittish as Jack.  
  
"That's Deadshot..." The costumed man hissed as he passed the thug, stopping at the edge of the boat and staring out at the harbor.  
  
"Right, sorry..." The smallest thug nodded apologetically, nearly groveling. The largest thug chuckled a bit, but quickly fell dead serious under Deadshot's icy glare.  
  
"Say that name again and I'll spare the Bat the trouble and slit your measly throat myself." He warned as he stepped calmly to the edge of the boat, grabbing the railing in his hands and staring at the moon warily. "We can't afford mistakes like that. He's flying tonight..."  
  
The small pack took a brief moment to gather their collective jaws off from the floor.  
  
"Ha! Told ya he was real!" The nervous thug exclaimed proudly, a goofy grin on his face that drew a look of irritation from the smallest thug as he punched him happily in the arm.  
  
"You've met him?" The largest thug asked, dumfounded and officially converted.  
  
"Me and The Bat have had ourselves a couple of tussles, yeah." Deadshot turned, an obvious sneer resonating under his mask. "Trust me when I tell you the stories are true..." The man was all at once very grim, closing in on the trio. "He'll rip you to shreds and you won't even see him do it. Its like he's not even there when's he's coming after you. You just see flashes of black in the night as you start to panic. You shoot, but there's nothing there but smoke and night. Don't let yourself be tricked, though; he is the night, and vengeance, all that other stuff that's there to keep us in line. He's that thing that's been in the back of your head since you were a kid that makes you fear for your life when the lights go out and things go bump." Deadshot loomed over them now, his intense breath heavy on their faces as they cowered. "He's like the touch of God, and not that benevolent grandfather in the sky we like to think is watching over us, smiling. He's that old testament stuff we're supposed to bow to, that one that'll damn you to hell for any sin without thinking twice and watch you burn. So you better hope that he's not around when you're doing the things he says you shouldn't..."  
  
They were trembling beneath him now, and after another intense second, he let out a very amused guffaw as he tore the newspaper from the nervous thug's hands. "You guys actually believe in this crap?" He chortled, tossing the tabloid aside. "You may as well believe in freakin' aliens coming to earth and gods sitting atop Mount Olympus."  
  
There was a sudden clink as something landed on the steel floor underneath them. The quartet of criminals looked down to find a small, spherical steel orb between them. Suddenly, it exploded in an eruption of the thickest smoke imaginable, wrapping the boat upon which they stood in a cloud of blinding fog. Through the scope over his eye, Deadshot watched in a panic as something descended around the largest thug's neck and snatched him up into the night sky. When the smallest thug made a run for it, something caught his legs and pulled him back deeper into the smoke, screaming and clawing at the floor hopelessly. Deadshot disappeared into the ship, leaving only Jack to glance around frantically for the darkness in the smoke he'd been warned about.  
  
As the fog cleared, the nervous, terrified thug saw his two comrades, hanging with cuffed hands from a crane, bruised, beaten and unconscious. He wobbled backwards, bottom lip trembling as a dark figure emerged behind the two carcasses. He reached desperately for his gun with a shaky hand, but the dark figure needed only to whip his arm out from under his all-encompassing mass of black to have something thrash through the air and knock the gun away, sending it down deep forever into the river. The thug stumbled again and fell to the floor, quivering in a fit of hysteria as the dark figure leaped from its pedestal and landed within a foot of the helpless thug.  
  
The moonlight exposed it as something just as menacing as any monster or demon. He was a vision of black: a cape cascading over his body and to the floor like the cloak of Death itself. Under it were the occasional glimmerings of a silver emblem of a bat on his chest and a thick grey belt crossing over his waist, like a high-tech championship. The momentary flapping of his cape in the wind revealed a rock hard, rippling musculature under his black armor, which covered every inch of his body. His head betrayed his awe-inspiring demeanor to reveal that he was indeed a man, with a mask obscuring most of his face but leaving his jaw and piercing blue eyes for all to see, though they did nothing to soften this dark knight's paralyzing scowl.  
  
"I take it you've heard of me..." The Bat hissed coldly, looming over the meek Jack, who screamed in horror as the darkness consumed him.  
  
-----------------  
  
Deadshot twisted his neck sideways as a blood-curling scream echoed down through the hall of the ship, followed by the subtle but obvious ring of boots slowly marching towards him. With a shake of his head, he dismissed it, tearing a crate open and shoveling dull green jewels into a burlap sack. He wouldn't screw this one up. Not this time. Too much at stake.  
  
As the thunk of the boots grew faster and faster, he whipped himself backwards, and found himself gazing into empty darkness. Not to be fooled, he turned on the scope over his eye, and the darkness was replaced by bright, glowing red. He scrutinized the large, storage bay warily, loading the guns on his wrists in case of attack, and caught the flapping of a cape. Deadshot immediately rolled and started firing continuously, watching carefully as the shadow moved and dodged as it ran along the wall, disappearing behind crates just as Deadshot fired his last round.  
  
Pressing at a few buttons on his wrist, Deadshot tiptoed carefully around the wall of crates, guns armed and ready. Pressing himself against the one side of the crates, he whipped himself around the corner, guns pointed and found...  
  
Darkness there, and nothing more.  
  
He tensed further, looking all around him in confusion and panic. Unfortunately, he never bothered to look above, and he didn't even notice as something descended from the ceiling behind him. However, he did recognize the air getting heavier and that familiar clunk of boots.  
  
Deadshot whipped himself around and fired a shot, but an arm reached out and shoved the gun off course as another grabbed him by the throat and threw him harshly down through the wall of crates. The arm effortlessly pulled him back to his feet from the debris as he was still recovering, and tossed him through a second tower of crates. As Deadshot rolled off the impact and onto his feet, he tried yet again to fire a shot, but a thin black projectile sliced through the air and into his weapon, destroying it in an explosion of sparks.   
  
He stumbled backwards as his weapon fell to the floor and the dark figure sprinted towards him. Before a second had passed, the figure was upon him, shoving him up into the wall with one arm and quickly disarming him completely with the other.  
  
"Jesus!" Deadshot exclaimed as he felt himself lifted off the ground, finally staring down the dark monster face to face.  
  
"No..." The monster muttered, a deep, menacing glower on his face as he held the man with both hands at the collar. "Batman."  
  
The Batman smacked him to the floor, pacing slowly around him, impossibly horrific  
  
"What is it this time, Floyd?" It began quietly "Horse? Coke? Must be one hell of a shipment for somebody to give you all these toys to play with..."  
  
"W-What?" Deadshot stammered, wondering how this beast knew of him. "How do you...?"  
  
"How do I know?" The black monster hissed, leaning into within an inch of Floyd's face. He grabbed him by the collar and easily heaved him onto his feet and into a wall. "I've been watching you. You may like to think you do a clean job but I've got so much dirt on you it sickens me. You're sloppy Floyd, and it astounds me to think that someone would have actually expected you to be able to do anything on your own."  
  
"They didn't..." Deadshot sneered in spite of himself, which elicited a restrained look of surprise from The Bat, who let Deadshot back down onto his feet.  
  
Something hummed quietly as it flew through the air. Deadshot watched as The Bat turned around just in time to dodge the projectile: a foot-and-a half long, three pointed sai. Floyd screamed and shut his eyes as the sai raced towards his head. After a second of nothing, he opened his eyes and found that the Bat had caught the weapon just before the longest point had pierced his head.  
  
"You're lucky." The Bat muttered, tossing the weapon aside and letting a terrified and relieved Deadshot sag into the wall for a moment before giving him a harsh backhand. Deadshot crumpled to the floor, unconscious. "But not that lucky..."  
  
The Bat paced the room carefully, scanning it for intruders in the shadows. They wouldn't be able to hide for long before he'd find them. As his namesake suggested, he was at home in black obscurity. The sanctity of darkness was not their's to be had.  
  
A shrill battle cry rang out from the corner, and he turned to face a figure tumbling in his direction. She stopped within a few feet of him, assuming an expert battle stance, a sai in each hand. She seemed very young, and far too graceful and beautiful to be a threat. Her black hair was tied into a bun, and her skin was a creamy tan colour, probably Chinese, although the veil masking the bottom half of her face made it harder to tell. She was thin, but hardly petite. She was fit: a hard, toned, yet still feminine body obvious despite her flowing, yet form-fitting battle gown. The Bat simply stood there for a moment, watching her, and if he was impressed, he didn't show it.  
  
She charged in much quicker than he'd of guessed she was able and delivered a perfectly executed kick to his gut and followed with a knee to his face that sent him stumbling backwards. Finally, she jumped up and crescent kicked him across the face, sending him sprawling into more crates. She stood and waited for him to get up. She wasn't looking for the instant gratification of a kill. She was looking to truly best this beast that had taken over the night and put fear back into the hearts of the jaded and cynical. As he recovered back into his daunting vertical base, seemingly unfazed, he was willing to admit he'd underestimated her. He wouldn't let it happen again.  
  
She dashed in once more, stabbing at his face with one of her sais, but he dodged easily by doing nothing more than leaning back. She followed suit, constantly slicing at air that he'd occupied less than a millisecond ago as he dodged each of her lightning quick strikes with an inhuman fluidity. His cape seemed almost stuck to his body, swirling with him perfectly as he moved, arms hidden at his sides under it as he made no effort to hit her back. Irritated at his demeaning choice of play, she struck him hard with the butt of her weapon in the windpipe, kicked him in the knee to bring him down, and gave a him a blunt roundhouse across his face for his efforts. If he wasn't going to attack her, she'd make him.  
  
The Bat made no sound as he fell to the ground, which seemed odd to the girl. He didn't groan in pain, or even indulge in a grunt or growl, simply got back to his feet and stared at her as though the pain hadn't even mattered to him. It only served to cheapen her further, and her rage was starting to get the better of her. She tried to lay into him again but this time he caught her arm and twisted it with authority, jerking her wrist and disarming her of one of her sais. Spinning under her arm once more to face her, a fist swung upwards out from the mass of darkness, knocking her straight in the jaw, off her feet and onto her back. She cringed in pain at first, but smiled none the less as she saw the monstrous Bat looming over her indifferently, beckoning her to get up and try again. This is what she'd wanted.  
  
She shot up to her feet and charged forward, swiping at him with her one sai, which he somewhat surprisingly blocked instead of dodged. He countered with a swinging backhand, which missed, but recovered in time to catch her foot before it smashed into his face. Twisting the ankle, he swept the only leg that kept her standing out from under her. She spun in the air and wheel kicked him across the face, rolling back to her feet upon landing on the floor.  
  
She dove at him with a flying side kick, but he side-stepped it and tried to clip her with a hook kick. She ducked, and swung her weight backward, landing on her back as she snap-kicked him harshly on the top of his head. He stumbled backwards as she kicked back up and onto her feet, contorting herself through the air to deliver a flying twisting roundhouse across his face that sent him sprawling. Again, he made no sound.  
  
She hopped up onto a crate and dove at him, trying to finish him off with one clean axe-kick. He caught her in the air by her leg and abdomen, then slammed her down hard onto her back. He quickly applied a leg lock, and she howled loudly as he bent her unnaturally. Out of desperation, she continuously kicked him as hard as she could with her free leg, and he eventually let go.  
  
She hobbled to her feet once she was free of him, and he slowly returned to that looming position she had come to loath as he waited for her. She swung at him sloppily, and he blocked it easily, slipping the lengths of his arms on opposite ends of her body: her lower back and the upper half of her chest. He jerked his arms in a clockwise movement, both pressing against her, and he pulled her into the air and flipped her backwards onto her face. Stunned, he cuffed her in a split second before she even had the chance to get her head together enough to struggle. Well, that was it, she had thought. She lost. She cursed her arrogance, thinking the Bat would simply be another head on her wall. At least she'd die with honor, being fairly bested.  
  
The Bat looked down at her, content in victory if only for a moment. He almost instantly turned grim again, stalking menacingly around her. "You're going to jail..." He muttered plainly, as though it were simple fact.  
  
"I'm afraid this will not be your night..." A thick, smooth voice called out from the shadows near the Bat. A giant hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed him by the throat, easily heaving him into the air.  
  
The Bat looked down at the beast of a man who held him like a child. He was gargantuan, close to seven feet tall and almost as wide. Draped in tight black clothing which left most of his upper half exposed and a black mask over his face that resembled that of a luchadore or perhaps a sadist, he had a body that couldn't possibly be natural: a mess of rippling muscle, with biceps bigger than most heads. He seemed inhuman, perhaps a caricature of someone who would effortlessly become Mr Universe. Most grotesquely of all though were the tubes running from his chest, down his limbs, and even into the back of his skull, pumping only God knew what. The beast tossed The Bat aside and through a wall of crates as though he were nothing but a ragdoll.  
  
As the Bat slowly made his way to his feet, in the utmost pain yet unwilling to acknowledge it, the monster of a man closed in on him. The Bat swung to hit the man, but instead received a punch in his chest that was akin to getting hit by a train. He was sent hurtling backwards off his feet from the impact, hitting the floor hard a good ten feet or so away, yet still he made no sound, though he was not quick to his feet either.  
  
The man-beast made for another step towards the Bat, like a lion pawing his captured prey, but the distinct ringing of police sirens made him stop in his tracks. Disappointed, the man made his way over to the girl and easily snapped the chain of her hand-cuffs. She seemed very irritated with his behavior, muttering something in Chinese about dishonor, but he just ignored her and made his way to Deadshot, heaving the man and his bag onto his shoulder.  
  
"Some other time." The man said, saluting the Bat, who was still on the floor in the wooden debris of the crates, futilely trying to shake the cobwebs out from his head in time to re-capture the trio. As soon as he was fully aware, he looked around, but they were already gone, and the sounds of the sirens were getting louder by the second. The police would be here soon.  
  
With a heavy sigh, he sat up from his bed of splinters and wreckage, knowing he would not soon have time to investigate the scene further or the strength to pursue his prey. He declared the night a failure and stood to his feet, when he noticed a minuscule shard of the jewel Floyd had taken. He picked it up off the floor and looked at it. It was a faded green colour, not at all attractive or distinguished in the dim light. Simple jade, he thought to himself, but that hardly seemed valuable enough to warrant such elaborate smuggling and protection from a trio the caliber of which he had faced, whose efforts he figured cost more than the sack's worth they had taken. There was something about this that required further probing. He took a mental photograph of the entire scene, dropped the sliver into a pouch on his belt, and disappeared into the night without so much as a trace when the police came barging in.  
  
In the distance though, someone had seen him. Perched on a rooftop, she'd been watching him intently through her telescope, fascinated the whole time by the way he moved with the shadows even better than herself, which she had thought to be impossible. He was subtle, careful, expert, but above all aware. She had worried for a moment, however brief, that he'd spot her, but she shook the notion from her head. It wasn't him, anyway. The way he conducted and maneuvered so masterfully, meticulously planning and cogitating every step and second, had cast a heavy cloud of doubt over her. Carnage and holocaust couldn't possibly be that rational. When she saw him hobble out of the boat and into the shadows, hiding from the police, she was certain. He had been hurt. He was just flesh and bone, nothing more than a man, and for a second, she'd thought that this could actually be him.  
  
Almost embarrassed for having wasted her time on this supposed Batman, she took off across the rooftops and into the night sky like a watchful eagle over a concrete forest. She'd find the man they'd warned her about, before it happened, before everything came down, before he ended it. She'd find him, sooner or later. He had to be stopped, and she promised she'd be the one to do it. She wouldn't fail. 


	2. A kid named Smallville

Commissioner James Gordon took a long drag from his cigarette as he watched his men carefully lower two unconscious thugs from a crane. Any other cop in any other city would have been floored to see a crime scene like this, but not Gordon. He had come to accept this sort of thing when darkness fell. If New York was the city that never slept, Gotham was the city that slept all day only to wake at night and bare its teeth.  
  
Gordon was a man in his late forties, and there remained not a hair on his body that had managed to retain any colour. Though he might have been handsome in his youth, he wore his age without concern, drained, weary wrinkles pulling down on the skin of his face. Hastily dressed in slacks with a shirt and tie beneath an overcoat, he had made his way to the scene immediately after the call had awoken him and his wife, though now that he was actually there, he hardly seemed rushed.  
  
Gordon stepped over a barrier of bright yellow tape, dodging detectives and officers alike as he made his way up a ramp towards the inside of an enormous transport boat, a detached, jaded indifference about him. Gotham had aged and embittered him terribly, and he shouldered the burden on his own.  
  
"What do we got?" Gordon sighed, stepping into a large storage bay filled with investigators taking pictures and notes on the position of destroyed crates and other assorted debris.  
  
"Not much." A rotund, doughnut-shoveling man mumbled through a full mouth from under his round, flat hat. "Lots of empty crates, those two punks on the crane, and a few boxes full of jade, or emerald, or one of those green rocks." The man waved the idea away, as an officer handed Gordon a bag of the said substance.  
  
"Not up on my jewelry..." The man added as Gordon pondered the stones, adjusting his glasses. "So any idea what went down here, Commish?"  
  
"Seems like an old fashioned smuggling operation to me, Harvey." Gordon shrugged, removing his glasses and rubbing his temples. "Hardly seems worth waking me up for..."  
  
The large man known as Sgt. Harvey Bullock frowned, abstaining for a moment from his doughnuts. "Well then there's something you gotta see..."  
  
--------------  
  
"We found him hiding under some crates..." Bullock explained as he walked down the boat's ramp, hands in his coat pockets, cigar in his mouth and Gordon close behind. "Shaking and muttering to himself like he'd seen a ghost... we've tried to question him, but..."  
  
"But what?" Gordon asked, following Harvey to a squad car.  
  
"Just look." Harvey began with a frown, opening the squad door for the Commissioner and then leaning against it.  
  
Gordon bent at the waist and poked his head into the car, finding an incredibly meek, rather pathetic man huddled into the corner, his knees pulled up into his chest as he covered his face with his hands, trembling violently and staring into nothing through his open fingers. Carved superficially on his terrified face was a bloody, horrific bat, its thin red outline smeared and lightly scabbed over. He was babbling to himself, repeating 'bat' every few words or so.  
  
"Haven't been able to get anything else from him since we grabbed him." Bullock clarified as Gordon cringed, tilting his head at the victim.  
  
"What's his name?" Gordon asked, furrowing his brow.  
  
"Couldn't tell ya." Bullock shrugged. "No I.D., no wallet. All we found was a piece a couple of feet away from him. What do ya make of it?"  
  
Frowning heavily, Gordon stood once more to his full height, removing his glasses and cleaning them. "He's sending a message..."  
  
"Who?" Bullock inquired, appropriately thick-headed.  
  
"Batman." Gordon elaborated after a moment of deliberation, returning his glasses to the appropriate position at the end of his nose. "He's never done anything like this before..."  
  
Bullock laughed, which drew a questioning glare from the Commissioner. "Come on, Commish." Bullock sneered "You don't really believe in that crap, do ya?"  
  
Gordon only shook his head, starring out across the bay and at the skyline. "Seeing is believing, Harvey." Gordon sighed, numb and weary. " He's been building on the fears and speculation for months, but I guess he's finally ready. He wants us to know: Monster's going to come out from under the bed." The commissioner paused solemnly for a moment. "He's gonna take all this to a whole other level now..."  
  
--------------  
  
Sam's diner was a friendly place in one of America's least friendly cities. It rested a couple of blocks from the famous Monarch Theater, like a beam of sunlight condensed into a train cart replica, excruciatingly designed to make anyone who walked in feel right at home in the center of a bright, happy haven outside of harsh reality. Novelties and miscellaneous fifties memorabilia were littered everywhere, and a display case showed t-shirts emblazoned with the Sam's diner logo. Celebrity photos hung on every wall, most prominently of which was one of the owner shaking the hand of a dashing young man by the name of Bruce Wayne, the orphan all of Gotham had adopted as their surrogate son, with a quote from the playboy beneath it reading "Best food this side of Gotham." Sam had hung it up almost as proudly as he had his daughter's diploma.  
  
It was an unusually slow day for the diner, which was normally a bustling throwback to the fictionalized carefree days of old. Then again, almost everyday had seemed slow since the Monarch Theater across the street had shut down, seemingly cutting business in half. Wayne Enterprises had been a much needed sponsor/crutch.  
  
Sam- a gritty, fifty-something with a physique that was the direct result of living a life off a diet of little more than burgers and fries- washed the counter absently, his cheek planted firmly on his fist, staring out at nothing in particular, waiting for the morning rush. The ringing of a bell as the door swung peaked his interest, but he soon fell back into his familiar boredom as he saw the equally familiar and boring kid standing in the frame.  
  
Clark Kent seemed the sort of person who was trying to be plain, yet somehow couldn't manage it. He was handsome to be sure, but he could have been remarkable if he tried with his strong jaw and soft blue eyes, though he lacked the disposition ordinarily belonging to the good-looking. Under his faded jeans and his vintage red shirt was a thin, lean body that begged to attain some level of greatness. A mess of curly dark brown hair atop his head probably added more so to his boyish charms than he had intended. He was the pinnacle of the farm-boy lifestyle. With strong morals and an innocent naivety rooted in the appropriately titled town of Smallville, he lived in the enormous scale of Gotham with the sort of delighted awe ordinarily reserved for the opening of Christmas presents. He seemed absurdly out of place on the grim streets with that goofy, irrepressible grin permanently etched upon his face. The boy next door in a world without neighbors.  
  
"You're late, Smallville." Sam sighed, expressing neither anger nor surprise, stuck in a placid indifference as he picked up a newspaper with a headline that read 'GOTHAM'S BATMAN STRIKES AGAIN'.  
  
"Sorry, I had a final at the U." Clark apologized half-heartedly, hopping over the counter and getting straight to work  
  
"The way you whip around here faster than a speeding bullet I'm amazed you could be late for anything..." Sam muttered, tossing the newspaper aside with a grunt of distaste.  
  
"Still no pictures, huh?" Clark grinned at the round man.  
  
"Not a one." Sam fumed, crossing his arms. "I'm startin' to suspect that this Batman guy is just some sorta marketing ploy to deepen the pockets of these newspaper leeches."  
  
"Maybe they're even staging all those crimes he's getting in the way of." Clark sneered sarcastically, running a quick check of the ovens.  
  
"Wouldn't surprise me, the lousy blood-suckers..."  
  
Clark just shook his head and chuckled, stepping into his apron as he cleaned assorted messes around the kitchen and restaurant.  
  
"Anyway, you better not be late tomorrow..." Sam continued, disappearing into the kitchen as Clark mopped the floor. "We can't afford these sort of screw-ups with Bruce."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Clark frowned, stopping to admire the photo of Wayne and Sam for just a moment. "I don't know why a big-time player like him lets you cater for him, Sam."  
  
"Watch it, Clark." Sam warned, instantly at the defense of the playboy.  
  
"All I'm saying is it makes no sense." Clark shrugged, shaking his head. "He can afford the best, right? His bankroll is almost as big as his libido. I don't see why he'd trust us with something as huge as this benefit with Luthor..."  
  
"That bankroll is what's keeping this place breathing, kid." Sam notified him, increasingly irritated. "You keep that Smallville jealousy to yourself. He may have the bucks of one of those corporate jerks, but he's a good guy. Just cause he's a big fish don't mean he's a shark."  
  
"I don't get it." Clark sighed, opening the paper to an article with a headline that read 'LUTHOR/WAYNE JOIN TO REJUVENATE GOTHAM' "He never even eats here, what with that crazy new age diet of his." Clark chuckled as he sat to read the article. Sam just shook his head, distracting himself with the stove. "You know I hear he eats nothing but fish, veggies, and rice, specially prepared for him by his cook." He grimaced in disgust, flipping to the next page of the article.  
  
"Clark..." Sam cautioned quietly, silently pleading for the boy to stop  
  
"Give me a burger and fries any day. Why on earth would he care if this place were to go belly-up? Just more property for the snatching, right?" Clark sneered to himself, but he was rather perturbed when he was met with nothing but silence. He turned on his stool to find Sam leaning sorrowfully over the stove, biting back something. "Sam?" Clark pressed, standing to his feet worriedly.  
  
Sam didn't answer for a moment, a solemn frown weighing down his face "His folks used to take him here..." He finally managed to choke out  
  
"Oh..." Clark trailed off quietly, bowing his head uneasily and silently getting back to work, mopping the floor and feeling quite the imbecile. "I... I didn't..." He started, but never finished.  
  
"Anyway," Sam began anew, clearing his throat, sniffing loudly, and wiping at his eyes with his forearm. "It's gonna be a big day tomorrow, so you gotta look good, okay? This is important, so wear your uniform."  
  
"Fine." Clark shrugged indifferently, still somber. He didn't mind the uniform, really. It wasn't overly uncomfortable, and he liked the logo on the breast pocket: a swirling red S inside a triangle with a red border. Clark had always thought it was very distinct looking.  
  
The ring of the bell above the door pulled him away from his idle musings, and when he saw the figure standing in front of him, his jaw nearly smacked the floor.  
  
Now Clark Kent was not a man to gawk whenever a pretty girl passed by. He'd been raised with the sort of manners and gentlemanly disposition that was thought to be myth in the deep cynicism of Gotham, perhaps even more of an urban legend than the Batman. However, as Clark stood there, unable to move, he found it hard to believe that there was a person in the world who would have held his moment of indiscretion against him.  
  
She was gorgeous, almost inhumanly so, resembling a goddess more than she did a girl in grey pants and a loose fitting sweater. She was tall, and sculpted so perfectly as to make Michelangelo's David flush with envy: her long, thin but strong legs and flawless curves agonizingly tantalizing even under what for most was unflattering clothing. With long, wavy, ebony-coloured hair and bright, glimmering eyes upon her soft angelic face, it took a moment for Clark to realize he wasn't daydreaming. There was not a blemish to be found on her skin, nor was there a sign of make-up to imply her surreal presence was the least bit artificial; Clark figured she simply must have been built perfect. It was hard to believe that someone could truly look as good as she did right there in the door frame, and she wasn't even trying. It must have been infuriating for other woman.  
  
She stared back at him for a moment, seeming both uncomfortable and irritated with his prolonged gaze as she shifted her weight, folding her arms and withdrawing into herself self-consciously.  
  
"Hi, welcome to Sam's diner, home of 'the Super Burger'." Clark started with a shake of his head, realizing how rude he was being and feeling terrible about it. He waved his hand to a booth behind him, and she sat down, warily.  
  
"Our specials this morning are 'The Stubby Tower' -that's a short stack: four pancakes with a coffee or juice- and The Big Man Platter..." Clark continued, handing her a menu, which she only stared at, perplexed.  
  
"' Big Man Platter'?" She asked, shaking her head dizzily and setting down the menu.  
  
"Four eggs, coffee, toast, sausage, bacon, and ham..." Clark explained, rolling his eyes and sighing almost shamefully, anticipating her reaction. "It's stupid, I know. It's a one way ticket to an ulcer, if you ask me..."  
  
"I'll have that." She told him briskly, handing him the menu and staring out the window.  
  
"Excellent choice." Clark beamed, finding himself very agreeable. Pretty girls tend to do that to boys. He accepted the menu diligently and turned away, cringing and straining against the urge to slap his forehead and turn a bright embarrassed red.  
  
"Smooth." Sam chuckled as Clark passed by him. The boy only glared at him, handing him the order as he set to work at the stove. Sam's chuckle only deepened.  
  
"What?" Clark retorted to nothing but a glance and a smile.  
  
"Nothing..." Sam shrugged, raising his hands innocently. "But I'm thinkin' of making a move, if you don't mind."  
  
"Don't kid yourself." Clark laughed, cracking eggs into a pan.  
  
"But I can still kid you, right?" Sam asked sarcastically, knowing or at least not caring what the answer was. "She's quite the dish, ain't she?"  
  
He caught the girl's ear, who just looked at the two, puzzled.  
  
"Sam," Clark began with a sigh. "You're at least fifty, and that, I'm afraid, would be cradle robbing, which is something I'm told people look down on these days. Plus you're married."  
  
"A guy can dream, can't he?" Sam shrugged.  
  
"If he doesn't mind being a dirty old man." Clark shrugged/warned.  
  
"Maybe I'll just have her on the side." Sam pondered, scratching at the curly grey chest hairs protruding from his shirt collar. "You know, like one of those mistresses or something. Then I can just poke her when I feel like it instead of having to deal with all that girlfriend kissy-kissy junk."  
  
Clark just shook his head in distaste. "That's gross and wrong, Sam." Clark scolded him. "Not that you'd ever have a chance, anyway."  
  
"What, you don't think I could have her?" Sam gasped, placing a hand on his heart, mockingly offended.  
  
"Please," Clark shook his head, working at the meal. "You'd never even make it into the nursery."  
  
"I'd like to see you do better." Sam muttered, folding his arms confidently.  
  
Clark straightened over the stove, frozen. He looked over his shoulder at the girl, a small grin creeping onto the corner of his mouth. "Alright." Clark said slyly, picking up the prepared plate and marching towards her.  
  
"Don't forget your hat." Sam called, lifting up a paper cap with his familiar logo on it. Clark ignored him, and Sam only smiled, patting himself on the back and thinking himself very clever as for the umpteenth time, Clark played right into his game.  
  
"Here's your breakfast, and your coffee will be right along." Clark stated, smiling politely. She paid no attention to him, her elbow on the table, cheek resting on her palm as she stared out the window at the Gotham skyline. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Clark asked, taking the seat across from her, which elicited a curved eyebrow from her as he gazed at Gotham, a twinkle in his eye.  
  
She merely shrugged, sinking back into her seat and folding her arms. Gotham was a malicious ocean of steel and glass, cutting into the polluted sky like a thousand knives.  
  
"What?" Clark looked at her in shock, half chuckling. "You're not impressed?"  
  
"It's too...much." She stated plainly, a frowning while she eyed him warily with a sideways glance.  
  
"What's wrong with that?" Clark asked, returning her questioning glare as he tried to gain an understanding of her. He recognized her type almost immediately. 'Extremists' as they were called, and it seemed one wandered into the diner every other day or so. Sam just called them commies.  
  
"Mere men were not meant to touch the sky." She explained almost scholarly, still not fully acknowledging him.  
  
"So what are men meant for?" Clark asked, egging her on in a fashion he felt was expert. "What do you think of our humble little race?"  
  
"I think you're fumbling towards disaster." She said with an honesty that caught him off guard. "Mankind is flawed. It rips and claws at everything around it, even itself. It's not content to simply exist as it is, it has to force everything to bend to its will and its laws. It's arrogant enough to believe it was born with the right to dominate and to rule, to take whatever it wants and think nothing of the damage it's causing. It bends truth and art with its sciences, narrowing its comprehension of the universe around it, but expanding its vast ego in the process. Mankind was given a place just as everything else was, and it needs to learn it."  
  
"Uh huh..." Clark nodded slowly, taken aback. "What's so bad about reaching for the stars?" Clark asked, shaking off his inhibition and drawing her into a conversation.  
  
"There are no stars left." She said, mournfully looking to the ugly sky. "They've been torn from the sky. The heavens have been replaced with a defiled mockery of themselves, hanging open like a wound." She paused, looking strangely pained and saddened. "It's practically bleeding."  
  
"Come on, Mankind's not all that bad." Clark persisted, pushing the plate he had brought closer to her. "At least the food's good."  
  
She looked at him questioningly, then at the plate. She poked at it carefully with her fork, like an animal pawing something unfamiliar.  
  
"So, what are you?" Clark asked cautiously, trying to avoid another rant. "Some sort of environmentalist, or a feminist maybe?"  
  
She regarded him oddly, as though he spoke nonsense.  
  
"Never mind." Clark shook his head, and reached over the table to shake her hand. "The name's Clark Kent. Sorry to say, but I may be part of this 'Mankind' you seem none too partial to."  
  
She stared at his hand, then at him, not reacting in the least.  
  
"So..." Clark began, retracting his hand and sinking back into the booth as Sam handed her a cup of coffee and set down another in front of Clark, winking at him. "You sound like you're not from around here. What, may I ask, brings you to fair Gotham?"  
  
"Business." She answered simply, sipping at the drink and cringing in distaste as she downed it.  
  
"None of mine, I'm guessing." Clark quipped, smiling politely and persistently. "Well if there's anything you need to know about Gotham, feel free to ask."  
  
"I've got one question." She said as she angled herself to look at the newspaper on the counter. "What's is this city's fixation with 'the Batman'?"  
  
"Oh, him." Clark began with a casual shrug, stirring his coffee. "He's sort of a local legend around these parts. Kind of like the Lochness monster I guess, but without all the evidence. Most people think he's probably just superstition."  
  
"He's not." She stated factually. "What does this city think of him?"  
  
"Everyone says something different." Clark continued, a childish and whimsical heir to him as he stared at the skyline. "Some say he's a ghost out for blood. Others say he's a monster that falls from the sky and preys on the wicked. The rest just say he's a psychopath. Whatever he is, he's got the whole city freaked out."  
  
"What is it he does?" She pressed none-too-subtly. "Why all this attention?"  
  
"You seem to be really into this Batman guy." Clark sneered, sipping his coffee. "You got a crush or something?"  
  
She glared at him coldly, offended and angered as a redness crept into her cheeks.  
  
"I think it has something to do with the things he's doing." Clark shrugged, answering her question and trying to weasel his way back into her good graces. "Every night, police are finding their jobs already done for them; they arrive on the scene to find crooks bloody and all kinds of messed up, either unconscious or scared half to death." Clark turned solemn for a moment, shaking his head. "Weird thing is though, he never kills anybody. He leaves punks and thugs beat like animals on the street, but they're always alive when the cops find them sobbing in the alleys, blabbering about the night jumping out at them." Clark paused, thoughtful. "I think he wants us to know he's there. I think he knows we're spreading the word: he's here to bring some sort of justice that the police can't or won't offer." Clark stopped and looked the girl right in the eye, smiling. "He's a hero."  
  
"Hero?" She scoffed. "If he were a hero, he'd be admired, not feared. Sounds more like a mad vigilante to me."  
  
"A lot of people would agree with you." Clark shrugged, leaning back against the booth. "And maybe he is. Call me crazy, but I like the idea of somebody watching over us, making sure the bad things don't happen. "  
  
She sneered, and looked to the sky. "This city is not his to protect." She said. "He has no right to give himself this responsibility or make a false diety of himself. He's a man like any other, only he's vain enough to believe he's meant to judge all those among him. A narcissist, an anarchist, but a hero? Never."  
  
"Say whatever you want." Clark shrugged indifferently, adjusting finally to her unusual thought pattern. "The fact is he's doing good. He's saving lives, slowing crime, and solving mysteries the police were light-years behind on. Doesn't get more heoric than that."  
  
"You take his side?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at him.  
  
"If Mankind's as bad as you say it is, it needs a hero." Clark explained. "Someone who wants stand up and be our conscious for us. We're losing our way as everything around us keeps growing, and it's good that there's someone up there in the night sky to remind us that there are still consequences and that it's still important to do what's right. He's a hero, and yeah, I'm completely on his side. He's standing up for what he believes, even if the world around him can't understand it anymore. He's fighting for the morals we're ignoring." Clark sipped his coffee, and shrugged. "Someone's got to do it. He's just the one who finally took it upon himself and stepped up."  
  
She stared at him silently for a moment. Slowly she began to nod her head respectfully. "You're right." She said, standing from her seat and smiling politely at him. He almost blushed. "This world does indeed need a hero." She extended her hand to him, and he shook it graciously. "I wish I could stay and talk, but you remind me there's work to be done. It was a pleasure and privilege meeting you."  
  
Clark nearly gushed and giggled as she walked out the restaurant, leaving him crushing like a school boy. She was so stunning, and she practically said she wanted to see him again! Clark was giddy.  
  
"Not bad, Smallville." Sam complemented the boy from behind the counter.  
  
"Yep." Clark smiled confidently, leaning back and resting his hands behind his head. "Wayne would be awfully green right about now."  
  
"I don't know about that..." Sam began.  
  
"Please... she loves me!" Clark persisted. "I was so slick I was practically slippery. There's no room for improvement."  
  
"First of all," Sam began with a smile, using his fingers to check off the list he had gathered in his mind. "You didn't even get her name, let alone her address, a number, or even a stinking e-mail."  
  
Clark stopped smiling, and began to sag in his seat.  
  
"Second of all, she don't know a thing about you." Sam continued, his own arrogant smile growing by the second. "You told her your name was Clark Kent, and nothin' else. In a city this size, she couldn't find ya if she wanted to."  
  
Clark sunk even further into the booth, grimacing slightly as his errors added up.  
  
"And last but not least," Sam folded his arms, frowning slightly. "I'm pretty sure she left without paying the bill."  
  
Clark turned and looked at the table: nothing but an empty plate, and no money in sight. "Dang." Clark muttered, smacking his forehead and falling backwards.  
  
"Sorry kid." Sam chuckled, busying himself at the stove. "But you ain't no Bruce Wayne yet." 


	3. Almost

Bruce Wayne stared at his reflection in the mirrored wall of an elevator, his eyes chillingly empty as he stood there by himself. No one ever saw him like this. This was him at rest, deeply enthralled in the trappings of his own complex psyche. This was an instant in which he put up no front, wore no disguise. These moments were increasingly rare, and virtually no one could claim with any truth that they'd had spent any time such as this with the man. They could think and believe they had, but they would be wrong. No one short of his butler Alfred had met the true Bruce Wayne.

He looked at himself coldly. He was tall, his hair an absolute pitch black and his eyes an icy blue. He wore an overcoat atop a custom made black suit that fit him almost perfectly, with a white shirt and a black tie beneath it. He had been told many times by many people that he was very handsome, that he was a nearly flawless physical specimen. His jaw was square, his body was toned and lean, almost perfectly formed, beyond what most people dared to imagine attaining. It wasn't enough, though. It would never be enough.

He stared at himself with an intense dissatisfaction, his blood boiling. Behind closed doors, he had broken almost every Olympic record in existence. If he were to compete, he'd be declared the world's greatest athlete in days. But that would never be good enough, at least not for him. His acute discontent drove him forward, made him strive to surpass the near-perfection he'd attained, and destroy any limitations. His weakness and humanity taunted him incessantly, and in his astounding analytical mind he was sure he'd never be rid of them, for there was no such thing as perfect. He would forever be _almost_.

_Almost._ It was like poison in his brain, taunting him, mocking him. No matter how hard or long he worked, it was always just _almost. _It was the most grating word a perfectionist could hear, and for Bruce Wayne, perfectionism was both a religion and a disease. It made him continue pressing onward, forever improving every minute detail. He was far too intelligent not to realize the irony of how impossible it was to get any nearer to perfection since it was unattainable in the first place. Alfred often pointed that out, much to Bruce's chagrin.

The ding sound of the elevator making its stop kicked him immediately out of his trance. In less than an instant, before the elevator doors even opened, he was wearing one of a thousand masks he had in stock. He was Bruce Wayne the businessman now, the young and clever President of Wayne Enterprises, the bred winner of Gotham's economy. Most other entrepreneurs thought the man a playboy, but the moment he stepped into the boardroom, they almost invariably found themselves unpleasantly surprised

Bruce strode out from the elevator with a self-assured grin on his face and a mildly cocky bounce to his step, his foot never once touching the border of a tile. His free hand rested comfortably in his pocket, the other carrying a leather briefcase. He tried to remember how much the thing cost him as he passed a pretty young secretary who was trying not to be too obvious while she stole glances at him. He winked at her, and she turned a bright red, suddenly very busy and intent on the work at her desk. Bruce's grin only widened.

He came in front of a double door, and doing the most pompous thing he could think of, opened the both of him, stepping confidently into an enormous round room. The walls were nothing but windows, a panoramic view of Gotham atop one of its tallest buildings. A gigantic round table occupied the vast majority of the room, surrounded by twenty or so black leather chairs fit for capitalist kings. Emblazoned on the table was an immense, famous logo: LexCorp.

"Glad to see you finally made it." A deep, self-important voice called from behind the head chair, which was pointed outwards.

"Come on Lex, you should understand better than anyone how important it is to be fashionably late." Bruce quipped, setting his briefcase atop the table and throwing his overcoat over an empty chair as he took a seat directly opposite the voice.

The man who would be Lex Luthor swivelled his chair to face his associate. Lex was a man old beyond his years, already bald and jaded after just having taken over his father's company a mere couple of years ago, changing the name from LuthorCorp to LexCorp upon his inheritance, claiming it as his and his alone and cutting off generations of history. Even in his youth, he remained the corporate stereotype: a selfish, greedy man who's simple presence oozed smugness. He was, at least in the public eye, a parallel to Bruce Wayne. He was a rich, handsome, stylish, often grandiose playboy, who was charismatic and a terrific manipulator of the media. So alike were the two in fact, that Bruce was just about certain Luthor was not the man he pretended to be, and he was sure Luthor thought the same of him.

"You're a man after my own heart, Bruce." Lex smiled, and it sickened Bruce how artificial yet convincing it was. "That's why this partnership's going to work so well."

"Don't jinx it, Lex." Bruce warned jokingly, but beneath it there was definite gravity. "I haven't signed yet, remember?"

"Of course." Lex nodded graciously, pressing his fingertips against each other as he rocked back and forth in his chair. "And take all the time you need. Gotham's future should not be rushed."

Just then, a beautiful young Chinese woman entered from behind Bruce, carrying a tray of tea. She was quite striking, dressed in a dark red flowered pant suit, her silky straight black hair tied neatly into a bun with a feathery accessory and thin stylish glasses resting on her face. She was marvelously graceful, and Bruce just went on smiling that fabricated dumb smile of his as he analyzed her.

"Thank you, dear." Lex greeted her half-heartedly as she poured him a cup. "This is my assistant, Miss Wu-San. Poor him a cup, will you Sandra?"

Sandra Wu-San. Bruce made a note of it.

She bowed to her employer, and carried the tray across the room towards Bruce, an odd focus to her for something so menial.

"I do have a question, if you don't mind Lex." Bruce stated, opening his briefcase and extracting a document as Miss Wu-San poured him a cup and set it in front of him. "Now recently you put forth a large salary to hire a Dr. Teng, correct?"

"Yes, we brought him onto our staff recently." Lex nodded.

"Well it seems to me..." Bruce began, leaning back in his chair and 'accidentally' knocking his cup of tea off the table. In one swift maneuver, Miss Wu-San caught the cup of tea in mid-air, no more than a drip spilling from it. Bruce watched the whole thing intently, and smiled expectantly at her as she handed him the cup. "Clumsy me." He muttered, nodding at her and taking a sip of the tea.

"You really must be more careful, Bruce." Lex flashed what was perhaps an oblivious smile.

"That's sound advice for anyone." Bruce retorted endearingly, setting down the cup and rocking back and forth in his chair. "My utmost apologies, Miss Wu-San."

She nodded and half-bowed curtly, yet suspiciously, her face stone cold and her eyes squinted at him. Moving on, she left Bruce and walked to the opposite end of the room, taking her place standing at her employer's side.

"Anyway, I didn't recognize the name," Bruce lied "So I did a little bit of research to see why this man would be worth the money..."

"He's a scientific genius." Lex explained, cutting off his associate. "It's really quite remarkable the things he can do."

"I'll say. Rumor is he even completed a successful human clone before the CIA cracked down on him." Bruce went on, his eyes glued to the document he'd memorized days ago. He set it down and leant back in his chair, squinting at Lex "What I don't understand is why he's on your Weapons Development staff."

"I'm glad you brought that up." Lex smiled, perhaps feigning expectancy as he stood from his chair and turned to the Gotham skyline. He remained silent for a moment, thoughtful. With a deep breath, he began. "It's a beautiful city, isn't it Bruce?"

Bruce looked out at the place he'd called home for all his life. It stretched to the sky ferociously, and from up here it would in fact seem stunning. But Bruce thought himself enlightened, and he saw his home as grey and dirty, as if the entire city were covered in a thick layer of dust. He spent his nights cleaning that dust.

"Yes" He answered abruptly, refocusing on Lex.

"These times are trying on cities like these in our United States." Lex sighed, pacing the room. "As you know, these are times of war Bruce. It's not obvious up here, on the home-front, but each year this beautiful country is losing thousands of its children to the squabbles of others, leaving mourning families in their wake. I've made it my quest to end all that."

Bruce listened, a skeptical look on his face as Miss Wu-San turned off a switch and flipped on another. Thin black curtains came down over every window and threw the room into darkness. A projection screen appeared, and it lit ablaze with vibrant colours as she handed him a thick document, and returned to her place steadfast at Lex's side. Bruce, finally paying attention to the screen, realized what he was looking at: American troops landing on a beach on a grim, grey day, terrified looks on their faces as unseen gunfire began to cut them down, vicious foreign caricatures stabbing them with machetes and bayonets. Explosions littered the battlefield, and severed limbs flew through the air over sounds of screaming Americans. Bruce had to remind himself to wince and squirm as to seem uncomfortable.

"The sons of America need no longer lose their lives for their country, hoarding themselves in the fields only to be butchered like livestock in wars that have nothing to do with them." Lex continued, pausing the video and falsely patriotic as he approached Bruce. "Never again will decent men have to line up on the shores only to be mowed down carelessly. Never again will an American lose their life on the battlefield only to be forgotten."

Lex pressed another button, and new footage appeared: A built, exaggerated American man was shown flying inexplicably through the air. He wore a dark purple uniform complete with cape, the familiar Lexcorp logo emblazoned on his chest. The foreign caricatures screamed either an obscure language that escaped even Bruce or contrived gibberish and pointed at the man, firing bullets that merely bounced off him casually as he levitated, his hands on his hips and a glimmering smile on his face. A tank fired a missile at him, and it struck true, but when the explosion settled, the man was still there, yawning indifferently. Bruce had to use all of his vast discipline as to resist laughing at the increasing absurdity of it all.

It didn't end there. The purple suited man suddenly became a blur, dashing along the ground at impossible speeds, tossing the cowardly caricatures easily into the air. In a moment, the purple suited man grabbed the long shaft of an enormous tank's canon, and began to swing it as though he were doing a hammer-throw. As the man let go, the tank flew up seemingly hundreds of feet into the air. The purple-suited man again smiled and put his hands on his hips, his eyes shining a violent ruby. Suddenly, a thick column of bright red fire shot from the man's eyes and consumed the tank, exploding it in a rain of fiery wreckage and debris upon the battlefield.

"With Dr Teng's brilliant procedure, we could engineer a new kind of soldier, a kind meticulously assembled and designed to be nothing less than indestructible." Luthor began anew. The purple suited man suddenly stood atop a mountain, posing heroically, his cape blowing dramatically in the wind as 'America the Beautiful' played in the background and a see-through flapping American flag washed over the screen, still leaving the iconic image of the purple-suited man visible. The lights came back on and the movie ended, leaving only an anxious Luthor staring at a to-say-the-least skeptical Bruce.

"You're kidding, right?" Bruce asked abruptly, raising an eyebrow at his business partner.

"Excuse me?" Lex asked, oddly offended.

"Hate to burst your bubble, Lex." Bruce explained with a shrug, leaning back in his chair. "And I'm no scientist," He again lied. "But last time I checked, men can't fly, or lift tanks over their head, or shoot fire from their eyes, or do pretty much anything else your little cartoon did. It's impossible. This doesn't make any sense."

"Don't be so naive, Bruce." Lex said rather condescendingly, making his way around the table. "Surely you've heard of the spectacular advancements Lexcorp has been making in genetic manipulation. Now that we have Dr. Teng, with a little tinkering and the right DNA, we could eventually breed supermen by the thousands! The need for infantry would be obsolete!

"You're talking about clones..." Bruce only nodded his head, letting it all sink in as he looked over the paperwork.

"Think of it Bruce!" Lex continued, excited as he loomed over Bruce. "Think of the good we could do! No person would ever have to leave their family to join the ranks again! Our boys could stay at home, Bruce! Think of the lives we'd save, the heroes we'd be! There's not a person in the country who wouldn't be thankful, or a force on earth that would dare oppose us! All you have to do is sign the dotted line, and we can begin building the prototype together within the year, and the rest will follow. We'll share the glory fifty-fifty."

Bruce watched Lex for a moment, contemplating him. "I assume this is federally sanctioned?" He asked, and observed Lex's enthusiasm drop a few notches.

"Not as of yet..." Lex trailed off, turning and pacing away from Bruce ever so slightly. "But once we've finished the prototype..."

"I've seen what's happened to your partners on deals like this, Lex." Bruce cut him off rather coldly "They get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. You never seem to be around when everything starts coming down around them, and you always seem to emerge from it all completely unscathed. It happens too often to be coincidence, and I hate to say it, but I doubt you're as innocent as your lawyers and publicists say you are." Bruce shut his briefcase and stood to his feet, grabbing his overcoat. "Sorry Lex, but I'm not gonna be your scapegoat on this one. You've got more than enough money to fund this operation by yourself. I hope this doesn't change anything between us."

"Not at all." Lex forced a smile, but looked as though he were ready to explode.

"Good." Bruce smiled genuinely, grabbing his briefcase and backpedaling towards the door. "Then I'll see you tomorrow night at the gala."

"Certainly." Lex nodded with as much grace as he could muster.

"Miss Wu-San." Bruce nodded his head and winked at her as he opened the door behind him. "It was nice meeting you."

She only glared at him as he shut the door behind him, disappearing and finally allowing Lex to relax his manners.

"Annoying little bug, isn't he?" He muttered bitterly, an impossibly deep frown on his face as he reached for the bottle of scotch in the corner of the room. Miss Wu-San only grinned knowingly, eyes locked on the space Bruce Wayne had last occupied.

---------------

Bruce Wayne emerged from the brand new LexCorp building looking like he was in a rush, his breath visible on the cold autumn air. He jogged across the street to a black Rolls Royce waiting patiently. A skinny, aged chauffeur held a door open for him.

"Good Morning, sir." The mustachioed, thin haired man greeted graciously with a soft English accent.

"Good Morning, Alfred." Bruce muttered, taking his seat in the car and allowing Alfred to shut the door behind him. Alfred circled around and took his spot at the driver's seat.

"May I presume we will be returning home, sir?" He asked politely, the very embodiment of prim and proper.

"Yes." Bruce answered grimly from his back seat, the barriers around him falling away and revealing his actual consciousness.

"I would expect everything went as planned with Mr Luthor?" Alfred inquired, his eyes focused forward as he turned a corner.

"More or less." Bruce answered monotonously. "He's working in clones like I expected, illegally I might add, but his ambitions are ludicrous beyond anything I could have thought up."

"No surprise there." Alfred shrugged, stopping at a red light. "Always been overly confident, that one."

"He's hiding something, though." Bruce decided, peering absently out the window at the decaying city. "There's something seriously dangerous he's trying to pull, or else he wouldn't have bothered to try and make me back him on this."

"I would suppose cloning and gene splicing would be crime enough in itself." Alfred shrugged, pressing down the gas pedal.

"Considering his resources, it would only be a slap on the wrist if he got caught, and that's assuming that Uncle Sam wouldn't want whatever he plans on offering them. No, there's something more to this..." Bruce paused, thinking.

Alfred watched him through the rear view mirror. He was probably analyzing every detail of his meeting with Mr Luthor, hunting in his own mind for clues. Alfred always said someone could right a whole textbook on but one second of what passed through Bruce Wayne's mind, though he was certain his young master would never open up enough to give anyone a chance.

"Sir..." Alfred began hesitantly, his smile fading into a frown.

"Hmm?"

"About last night..." Alfred continued uncomfortably, thinking back to the bloody, terrified man his master had 'marked' the night before. "Do you think...do you think perhaps you took it too hard on that poor man? I understand that you need to be feared, but that... that man was petrified. That sort of thing leaves a scar that can not be healed. You don't think perhaps you took it too far?"

For a long while, Bruce said nothing only staring out the window at the passing countryside. "We'll see..." He finally answered, then said nothing more, choosing instead to ponder silently.

Alfred let Bruce alone to contemplate for the remainder of the trip, busying himself with the road until he came to the circular driveway of a strikingly beautiful, Victorian style Mansion. It resembled more of a lonely castle out in the country than it did a home, occupied only by the two of them. This was the very distinguished Wayne Manor, a cocoon for the complex and mysterious Bruce Wayne that had been in his family for generations.

"Here we are, sir." Alfred informed his master pointlessly, parking the car.

Bruce said nothing, only opening the door of the car and emerging from it as though he were returning from a funeral, his butler and closest friend not far behind him as he marched up the wide and round cement stairway to his front door. Bruce may as well have been walking with his eyes closed he knew the path so well, dead silent as he made his way straight from the entrance to his study in mere moments. Even though Bruce had only been walking, Alfred found it hard to keep up.

When Alfred entered the study, Bruce was already at the grandfather clock, and in a gesture of which Alfred never understood the significance, he turned the hands to 10:47. With a hydraulic hiss, the grandfather clock slowly began to move outwards from the wall, revealing a staircase that descended into black nothingness. Without even hesitating for a moment, Bruce climbed down the staircase, disappearing into the darkness. Alfred had seen this every night for two years now, and he still found it difficult to comprehend sometimes. Shaking his discomfort, he followed his master down the steps and into what had so grimly come to be known as the Batcave.

It stretched out for what seemed like all time, nothing but darkness in every direction outside of the assortment of rocky platforms that were used as the base of operations for the Batman's war on crime, lit only by the glow of monitors. On the different platforms were different sections: on one end was a full lab and an infirmary, both cutting edge. In a chasm there was a work shop filled with complex designs and revolutionary technology. At the farthest end was a garage and repair shop, which housed a vehicle so advanced it could literally drive itself if need be. Closest to the staircase was the armory, where the dark knight's many suits and weapons rest until they were needed. The centerpiece, on the highest platform, was his computer and his work table, at which he spent hours, developing his many tools and deepening his mastery over the city around him. He even had a trophy room, although as of now it was empty.

He took off his coat, undid his tie and crossed the walkway towards his computer: an immense console with a panoramic view due to the multiple screens, the largest of which was about the size of a billiards table. He sat down at the center of the behemoth. It curved inwards and towards him, about ten feet wide, eight feet long, and stretching about fifteen feet or so towards the cave's ceiling, with more unmarked buttons than most could count in a lifetime. Bruce and Alfred had memorized each of their functions a long time ago, thinking it best that only the two of them could possibly operate it.

"Something the matter, sir?" Alfred asked as Bruce cringed and peeled off his shirt.

His body had been like that for a couple of years now and Alfred still hadn't gotten used to it. Despite its near perfect musculature, it was grotesque: a mess of wounds and scabs, scars and bruises, with no more than an inch of his pale skin going without some sort of disfigurement. It was the body of a man pushed past his limits, stitched together and barely kept from falling apart by only the strongest will the world would ever know.

"It's that wound from last night, isn't it?" Alfred angled himself to look at a particularly unsightly bruise. It was around the size of a plate along his rib-cage, a sickening discoloured purple colour that would have made most men whimper at its mere sight. "Perhaps it'd be best to stay home tonight and let me take a look at it..."

"I'm fine, Alfred." Bruce hissed, the actor part of him incredibly convincing .

"Sir, you must learn to take it easier on yourself." Alfred pleaded, genuinely concerned, but The Batman would admit no weakness. "You're only hu..."

"These are the three from last night." Bruce cut him off, typing madly at the computer, and bringing up three images: one of a young Chinese woman, one of a blonde haired man, and another of a massive masked man. He enlarged the image of the girl. "This one's working for Luthor, and I'll bet my fortune that the others are too."

"How can you be sure?" Alfred asked, shaking off his concern and refocusing on the task at hand like he had every night for what felt like forever.

"I saw her in Luthor's office today." Bruce said plainly, bringing up a photograph he had secretly taken of her during the morning's meeting. "Luthor said she was his assistant, but if anything, she's his bodyguard. Goes by the alias Lady Shiva." Bruce tapped a few keys, and brought up her criminal record and a profile. "She's an assassin from the far east. Works cheap because she's inexperienced, but she's incredibly effective. Estimates say she's successfully done about thirty jobs, which isn't bad considering she's only been at it for a year or two."

"Pretty little thing." Alfred thought aloud, rather impressed and disappointed with her all at once. "How did she handle with you?

"She could have killed me had she wanted to." Bruce stated, frowning as that familiar dissatisfaction once more boiled in his heart. "She wanted to fight me, though, which was a mistake on her part. Her technique was better than mine, but she didn't have the experience or power to properly apply it. Once she gets some brains behind it, she'll be more than dangerous."

"I suppose congratulations are in order for the girl." The butler mused, quickly absorbing the facts on the screen. "Possible weaknesses?"

"I was still reeling so I didn't quite catch it all, but I heard her yelling at the man who snuck up on me, saying something about honor and fairness." He explained, furrowing his brow. "She likes to win, not just succeed. She'll want to beat me fair and square, not just kill me. She won't."

Alfred raised an eyebrow at his master's solemnity as Bruce tapped another key, two images appearing: one of a blonde haired man and the other of a masked individual with a scope over his eye, along with a detailed biography . "Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot, as I just found out last night." Bruce began, leaning back in his chair. "Former sharpshooter for the GCPD. Lost his job because he was helping the Maroni family on the side. Now he just does it full time. Floyd's been a hit-man and hired muscle for years now, but this Deadshot character's a new one. My guess is Luthor hired him and gave him the toys and that suit as more of an experiment of curiosity than anything else. He's a good shot, but his fists and mind are lacking. He's nothing to worry about. Probably the weakest link of the three."

Alfred nodded his head, and Bruce turned rather grim as he brought up the image of the third criminal: a hulking masked man with surgically connected pipes running along his body.

"I suppose this is the man that wounded you?" Alfred inquired carefully after Bruce had fallen silent for what was probably a minute.

"The only name I could find for him was Bane." Bruce muttered, ignoring Alfred, discontent with the monster in front of him. "Number three on FBI's most wanted list. Those tubes and probably those muscles are the result of an experiment the feds did on prisoners of an off-shore Cuban prison called Pena Duro. They were trying to build a new kind of soldier from the ashes of the wasted men. They tried some under-skin armor implants and made trial runs of an experimental steroid called Venom. They killed dozens of specimens, but for whatever reason, Bane here was successful."

"Too successful?" Alfred inquired, grimacing at the monstrous man.

"Apparently." Bruce shrugged. "He broke out within days of the experiment's completion and became one of the most eager-to-work mercenaries on the planet. The pipes inject the Venom directly into his major muscles and even into his brain, making him inhumanly strong and psychotic to back it up." The Batman paused, staring at his would-be conqueror. "The chemicals and hormones mix to create some sort of super-active poison for weaker people, but for whatever reason, it seems to be symbiotic with his metabolism. It reacts almost instantaneously, probably gives him a high akin to an overdose of painkillers and steroids that would knock a rhino dead in its tracks."

"We've come a long way..." Alfred muttered sarcastically, then raised an eyebrow at his young detective "How, pretell, did you come across all this information, by the way sir?"

"I'm afraid that's classified, Alfred." Bruce may have joked, but it was hard to tell considering the sternness of his face.

"It would appear that didn't obstruct you in the least." Alfred scorned in that indirect way at which he was expert. "So what is this Bane on humanity to you?"

"He's an addict." Said the Batman, chillingly callous. "Without the Venom coursing through his veins, he's nothing, and he probably knows it. The mental and physical connection is probably unbreakable. Considering it's pumped directly into his nervous system, I can't imagine how its affected his chemistry or the sort of dependency he has on it. Breaking it for any sustained amount of time would probably kill him" He whispered, an emergency plan forming in the back of his head if ever he were to face this Bane again, which he was certain he would.

"It's terrible..." Alfred whispered, staring up in disbelief at the man. "The things we do to ourselves...It's sick."

Bruce sat there silently, staring into nothingness.

"But I suppose it's the choice we make." Alfred sighed, distancing himself with some light dusting. "Some people, for one reason or another, will not content themselves with the world that surrounds them. So they lash out. Everyone wants to be something greater than what they are. We need that sense of superiority. We need to feel like we're in control..."

For an eternity it seemed the only sound left in the world were the feathers of Alfred's duster brushing lightly atop the workbench. Bruce said nothing, a mere shadow with empty eyes on the cave walls.

Putting away the melancholy and macabre like he had so many times before, Alfred noticed the shard his master had brought home the other night, floating in the liquid of a stasis tube and glowing a haunting green. "I take it this isn't the jade you thought it was?"

"No." Bruce answered, a step ahead of his butler and already looking at the results of the tests he'd ran on the jewel. "Analysis says that it's radioactive, but this thing doesn't show up on any mineral or chemical charts, so officially, it doesn't exist."

"Is it valuable?" Alfred wondered, looking closer at the mysterious rock

"Doesn't look like it would have any reason to be, other than the fact that it's probably pretty rare." Bruce stated quietly, thoughtfully. "It's an ugly rock most of the time, breaks easily enough, and the radiation it's emitting is far too weak to be of any practical use. Luthor could have just as easily gotten plutonium or uranium. Why he'd go to such lengths to smuggle and protect something as useless as this stuff is a mystery."

"Well you tend to be pretty good at solving those." Alfred shrugged, cleaning up the assorted messes Bruce had left at his work table. "Is it dangerous?"

"No real damage to the human system could conceivably result from it..." He muttered, looking over the stats. "Short of a lifetime's worth of direct exposure, of course. It's not combustible enough for a bomb..."

"Perhaps it has something to do with Dr Teng?" Alfred persisted, ever helpful.

"No..." Again Bruce shook his head, wracking his brain. "I've studied Teng's procedure. It's complicated and unconventional, but there's no reason for it to make use of anything this specific..."

Alfred waited expectantly, but Bruce didn't continue, only squinted at the screen as though he were hoping though not expecting the answer to come to him.

"Dare I say you've been stumped, sir?" Alfred asked.

For a long while, Bruce said nothing, still transfixed on the screen and his enigma. "Looks like it." Bruce finally conceded. The slightest hint of a grin made its way to his lips "And you know what we do when we can't get the answers from ourselves..."

"We get them from someone else." Alfred sighed, already on his way to the armory. "I'll prepare your garments for the evening, sir."

Bruce only leant back in his chair as his friend disappeared into the darkness. Just another night.


	4. A hero, a monster, and a boy

**(Quick thanks to everyone who left a review. The kind words and encouragement are much appreciated -Roll) **

A woman surveyed Gotham from the rooftops, her trained eyes studying the unfamiliar territory for the thousandth time. This place was foreign to her; Jaded, polluted, complicated, and seemingly unwilling to get along with itself. She had someone to lay blame upon, though she reminded herself that the responsibility was her's to be fair-minded and not jump to conclusions. Though it was hard when their world was so badly bent out of shape.

She tried not to judge them too harshly, tried to be more open-minded towards their positive aspects, but every time she looked at those sharp angled knives stabbing into that abomination of sky, and the concrete and asphalt that had scraped away all of mother earth's green and aged her to an ugly grey, she could think of men as only ungrateful children.

She took a deep breath, trying not to let the smog that filled her lungs bother her. She tried to think positively. One day soon, it would become her duty to be an ambassador of peace to this man's world. She tried to swallow her contempt, but it did her no good. Perhaps luckily, something else had taken priority, and that day was stalled.

The man who would end all earths. She had fought hard to be the one who would be sent out to destroy him, to be the one to protect her land. It was her home after all, and she was more than willing to do anything and everything to make sure that it still remained after the last punch was thrown. She knew from the instant she'd been conscious that it was her destiny. She was meant to be the hero.

She had first heard of the beast that would end the world in fairy tales and prophecies alike. With eyes redder than the fires of hell and arms that would make the face of the earth mother crack and tremble, she was told that he was the embodiment, the very zenith of war and fury, that with a simple glance, the world would set ablaze and that an easy breath escaping his lips would bring a thousand years worth of cold. The god of war. She had regarded these stories for the most part as exaggerations, though the reason was probably due more to optimism than pessimism. Regardless, she would brave the storms of fire, or ice, or both, to protect her many sisters.

For whatever reason, her thoughts drifted to the boy she'd met that morning. Clark Kent, she recalled was his name. Normally, underlings didn't bother to speak to her, so perhaps that was why he occupied her musings. She had never imagined that someone so low could have been so enlightened, so content, so alluring. He seemed thankful to have simply been where he was, leaving the complicated aspects of the world to those who wanted to deal with them.

She smiled. Maybe men weren't so bad after all.

Then again, there were the likes of the Batman. She scowled inwardly, narrowing her eyes as she looked out at the skyline, knowing he was somewhere out there, hiding in the darkness like the monster he wasn't. She'd been lucky to see him the other night. He was embarrassingly hard to track, and the only reason she'd had a chance to gaze upon him was because she'd been lucky enough to be in the area when he stopped a thief. She had followed him as he hurtled along the roof tops like a jungle cat. Admittedly, he'd been a difficult pursuit despite her clear advantages, and part of her now hated him for the audacity that he had challenged her in the least. Finally, as they came to a dock, she got to watch him in action.

She hadn't been impressed. His prey had escaped, and she saw the truth as she always did: he was nothing but a man in monster's clothing. Granted, he seemed impeccably intelligent and incredibly skilled, but he was only a mortal, capable at best of stopping other mortals. She thought him very arrogant to consider himself a hero.

She noticed a ragged looking man pulling a kicking and screaming woman into the darkness of an alley, practically drooling on her as he muffled her scream.

She grinned. This was how a _real_ hero did it.

She descended with a grace resembling a swooping eagle, landing on the asphalt like she'd been coming down a step to the floor. The ragged looking man starred at her for a moment, the animalistic lust in his eyes briefly switching to an ugly sort of confusion as she placed her hands on her hips disapprovingly.

The man pulled a knife and she almost laughed as he charged, knowing how ignorant and futile the man's effort would be well before he did. She reached out casually with one hand and grabbed his leading arm, and he screamed as she crushed the bones in his forearm with a simple squeeze. With her free hand she grabbed his throat, easily lifting him off his feet and into the air, careful not to grip so hard as to break him entirely yet still enough to see his eyes bulge and his skin darken to a purplish colour. She was rather content with that look of shock and terror as he looked down at her, and she downright glowed when she heard something in his neck snap loudly.

She tossed him aside, insignificant beast that he was. He hurtled into a brick wall, and then crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Frankly, she didn't really care whether he was dead or not. He was far too beneath her for her to notice.

She turned her attention to the abducted girl, who was trembling violently as she sat on the concrete hugging herself, alternating her horrified glance between the thug's broken body and this avenging angel that stood in front of her.

"W-Who are you...?" The girl whimpered, stealing frightened, nervous glances between tearful sobs, too humble to gaze at divinity for more than a second.

She knelt down in front of the girl, reaching out and brushing locks of hair out of her terrified face, and the girl felt wholly comforted. "I'm your hero." She said plainly, and it was probably the most sincere thing the girl had heard in all her life.

As the girl bowed her head to wipe away her tears, the woman ascended into the night sky, leaving the girl with a heartening smile and a renewal of faith in the world.

--------------------

Bruce Wayne stood like an unfaltering statue in the darkness, a lone lightbulb dangling from a string over his head, swaying back and forth silently. The light danced along his bare upper body, casting cavorting shadows on his chiseled muscles. He made no move or sound, embracing the nothingness around him and focused exclusively on the bat-shaped shell locked in a glass case in front of him. It stared back at him with empty eyes, recalling a black demon offering so much yet always hiding the consequences.

It was a good thing Bruce could have cared less when it came to the consequences.

Silently and ritualistically, he opened the glass door, and pulled out the garments like a humble monk handling sacred parchment. Slowly, respectfully, he stepped into the suit, pulling it onto him and re-affirming his second skin. No, that wasn't right. It was far more than a second skin; it was first and foremost. He pulled on the gloves, felt them tighten and heard them stretch as he clenched and unclenched his fist, and he felt filled, he felt right. That feeling was his only addiction. But there was something he could recall craving more.

As he buckled his heavy belt, flashes of something he had forced himself to skew exploded in his mind's eye. He remembered just as he remembered every time he wore this monster's clothing: the sense of excitement as he grabbed a hand from each of his parents and flung himself forward, joyous laughter tickling his insides; the paternal smile on his mother's face and the deep throaty chuckle of his father; The slowing of their footsteps as a figure emerged from the darkness; garbled words; a gunshot, a scream, another gunshot; pearls glistening in the moon light as they danced across the pavement, rolling rapidly away from the protective flourescent glow of a street lamp before getting caught in a puddle of blood in the alley; an open hand resting peacefully on the street with a watch reading 10:47; the frozen looks of terror on his parents' faces; the sudden shakiness in his legs; that suffocating sense of confusion, helplessness, and sheer terror as his breath grew short, looking around and finding nothing but darkness, silent as death, in every direction; the scrapping of his knees as he collapsed onto the pavement; the tightness in his chest as he hyper-ventilated; the whimpering as no one answered his desperate, pleading prayers; the overwhelming sense of hopelessness as he lay there on his knees, crying weakly on the street for what felt like all time, begging, imploring for his parents to just move a little bit, to blink those petrified eyes, for that blood to stop seeping from their wounds, for someone to come save him, to fix it all and make everything right again. But no one ever came, and nothing ever changed.

As he pulled on the mask, Bruce Wayne died, just like that night so long ago and every night since. From the ashes rose the Batman, and in mere minutes he was hurtling across the rooftops unlike anything that ever was or would ever be.

--------------------

Clark Kent emerged from Sam's diner as the enormous hands of Gotham's clocktower, built thanks to a generous donation from the Wayne Foundation, struck 11:00, with nothing protecting him from the always cold Gotham nights but a denim jacket as he locked the door behind him.

He walked the streets slowly yet without pause, taking in everything around him with an amused grin. Unlike the scurrying masses that trotted across the streets, heads down and huddled, trying to make themselves as insignificant and inconspicuous as possible, Clark took his time, chin up high as he stared at the Gotham skyline, a childish bemusement on his painfully innocent face. He saw no reason for fear in that smoggy sky full of sharp edges he had come to love.

He checked his watch. "Dang." He muttered with a frown, and started jogging briskly. He'd miss the news if he didn't hurry, and for all he knew there could be a new Batman development.

He took a shortcut through an alley, jogging at a pace that was just barely quicker than a walk and didn't press him in the least. He could have gone much, MUCH faster had he wanted to and still not strained, but he simply didn't feel the urge to. He liked this pace. It allowed him to observe, to enjoy. He felt as though he had all the time in the world.

He was cherishing the moment up until something hot and heavy reached out from the darkness and hit him in the side of the head.

Clark suddenly found himself very dizzy and feeling a pain that surprised him. His feet and head felt impossibly heavy as he stumbled and crash landed into a trio of garbage cans. He hit the pavement hard, and for a short second thought he might have been bleeding. But then, of course, he remembered who he was...

Although he was worried when the dizziness and pain didn't go away, but instead expanded with each passing second.

Clark turned on his side and found through his haze a man in a red, yellow, and steel suit, staring down at him, green mist spilling from his right hand. An unusual fear climbed up his spine as blood trickled down his forehead and over his eye.

"Whoa, hit the ground pretty hard there, didn't ya?" The man almost sighed, clenching and unclenching his fist, revealing a glowing green rock in his hand about the size of a baby's head. "Sorry kid, but the boss wants what he wants..."

As the man reached for Clark, a blur whipped out from the side, and the man in the red suit was suddenly shooting through the air. He hit a hanging fire-escape, bouncing off it like a rag-doll before smacking the pavement.

"Are you okay?" A soft voice asked as the green stars in Clark's eyes began to fade, and were replaced by a lovely, concerned looking face. She leant down and checked the wound on his head.

"Didn't catch your name..." Clark forced a smile through the searing pain at the familiar gorgeous girl in front of him. He looked odd, barely conscious, blood on his face as he squinted at her.

"Diana." She smiled back at him, almost matronly as she gently took the back of his head in her hand. His gaze shifted to something behind her, and she noticed he didn't seem particularly happy about whatever it was. She was hit from behind by something impossibly strong, and shook the very foundation of a building as she smashed into a brick wall, bringing down dust and little chunks of granite as she slid down the wall and to the ground.

The man was nightmarishly huge, and for a moment Clark thought he was still disoriented and simply hallucinating. But as the haze faded the man remained the same: a tank of a human being with unnatural bulbous muscles upon muscles, many of which Clark hadn't known existed. Nothing about the man seemed plausible, dressed completely in black, a ghastly mask covering all his head except for a minuscule slit over his mouth, and surgically grafted tubes running along his limbs, up his spine, and finally into the back of his head.

"Sorry, esse." The man muttered in a surprisingly smooth Cuban accent, taking his time as he strolled over to him, a hand the size of a bowling ball reaching out to grab him. "But you will not be so lucky tonight."

Diana had collected herself enough in time to see something in the night sky above shift and hurtle it self forwards a good ten feet or so before catching in both hands the bottom rung of a hanging fire escape. It swung both its feet up into the monstrosity of a man's face, sending him stumbling backwards as the thing in the night followed the momentum of the upwards swing of its legs, letting go of the fire escape and back flipping perfectly into a standing position. What followed seemed like nothing more but the night itself flowing and flickering frenetically but seemingly mechanical all the while.

Before the large man had a nanosecond to understand what was happening to him, the night sprinted towards the wall and sprung, lifting and launching himself off of it and delivering a sickening kick that nearly twisted the large man's head off his neck. The beast gathered himself enough to throw a punch, but that part of the night was empty, and it was instead focused below him, a leg whipping out from the mass of darkness and swinging backwards, a boot then hitting the large man square on the top of the head with a deafening crunch.

The large man again staggered backwards, hopelessly trying to shake his increasing daze before the night would once more descend upon him, but of course there was not enough time. The dark night jumped into the air, its body parallel to the ground as it tossed out a roundhouse with its left foot, twisting in the air and combining it with a right-legged wheel kick. Both feet connected in the large man's face in a flawless clockwise caporeia-style kick that almost brought the huge man off his feet.

Upon sticking its midair whirl, the darkness landed with its back to its opponent for just a moment, the shifting of its arms under its cape invisible to all but the most trained eye. As the dark night completed its rotation, its arms whipped out from its cape, spinning two slings with a steel ball at each end. While the man was still reeling from the kick, it tossed the two bolas, intending them to entangle the man and bring him down. However, the man caught the two wires with his gargantuan hands and tossed them to the ground. The darkness just watched him spitefully.

"Not on these terms, friend." The huge man saluted, and trotted away casually. The night made no effort to follow him.

Finally, the darkness stopped shifting and flickering, and stood still to its full height, revealing itself to be not the night but an actual man. Cape seemingly climbing up from the ground and cascading around him like a cloak of black nothingness, he pondered the enormous man for a moment. Soon enough, he turned to the pair of victims sprawled on the concrete.

"You alright?" he asked coldly and almost indifferently in a rock solid voice, more of an acknowledgment of their presence than an actual act of concern.

Clark, in absolute awe, swallowed hard and managed to nod his head. He stared at it like it was some vicious deity, or violence embodied. He wondered if Sam would believe him when he told him.

The thing he knew to be the Batman helped him to his feet, an inhuman mask of disregard on his face. "Stay out of alleys. They're not safe. Now get out of here." The Batman ordered plainly, pointing in the opposite direction of Clark's other, less terrifying savior.

Clark paused, trying to say something and alternating his focus between Diana and the Bat.

"Now." Said the Bat a little more assertively, a twinge of menace and warning in his level voice.

Frowning deeply, Clark backed away from the Bat carefully, and disappeared running into the night at a normal pace.

The Batman watched the boy until he disappeared around the corner, then fixed his gaze on the girl sitting on the floor, back to the wall, who happened to be staring a hole right through him. He marched over to her, and she had to admit he was frustratingly ominous as he stood above her, a column of moon light shining behind him and making an empty shadow of him.

"Get up." He muttered inexpressively, offering her a hand from out of the darkness.

Diana, unlike Clark, seemed just about furious, an irritate scowl on her bright red face as she slapped away his hand and stood to her feet. The very nerve of this mere man. Coming to save her, and literally putting her to shame as he purposefully demonstrated how superior and precise his execution was. He had no warrant to be the hero he was pretending to be, or to be as good as he was at it for that matter. He was just a man, just a pawn, and he had the audacity to seize power and rule by making himself a knight and a savior. He had no right to embarrass her so.

"You should be more careful." He said plainly, sinking into the shadows and hiding a clear shot of his face. "A girl could get hurt in this city."

"I'm fine." She hissed, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at him resentfully as she stood to her full height. She had hoped she was taller than him, but he had a couple of inches on her. He grated on her further.

"I wasn't asking." He told her coldly from somewhere unseen. She turned, trying to face him, folding her arms.

"I'm more than capable of handling any risks this city has to offer." She told him confidently, yet not exactly certain of where he was in the dark night.

"Our big friend seemed pretty close to handling you, so I'd take my advice if I were you..." He muttered, and suddenly appeared beside her, at her ear. "Stop following me."

She almost jumped, but instead glowered in an indignant huff. How could he have possibly known?

"I saw you watching me from the rooftops last night." He explained, reading her perfectly as he paced quietly away from her. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. "Don't."

"I'll do what I..."

"No, you won't." He raised his voice slightly as somehow he found the temerity to cut her off, stepping to within an inch of her face. Diana hated herself for being intimidated. "This is my city, and unless you want to end up hurt, or dead, you stay out of my way and do what I tell you. So stop prowling and go find yourself a life, or you're going to end up with a lot more than you bargained for. There are a lot of people in this city who need saving, so don't expect me to be lurking in the shadows watching your back every time you decide you want to try your luck just because you've got a pretty face. I've got better things to do, more worthwhile lives to protect."

He stopped for a moment, studying her. She was glowing a bright, furious red, and despite it all was very enchanting and down right sublime. She had an enticing, overwhelming smell about her. But The Batman would not be distracted.

"Leave." He pointed a finger down the alley, but she only stood there.

"What makes you think you have any liberty over the rest of these people?" She asked, with her own distinct tone of eminence "You might think yourself quite the detective, but I found something out about you, too."

The Batman didn't react in the least, but looked like he was waiting for her to continue. A small victory, she thought.

"You're just a man." She stated, and he didn't seem the least bit shaken. "Just a mad usurper of authority. You think you're any better than some other demented vigilante or terrorist who decides to take justice into their own hands? What makes you so right and them so wrong? Who gave you the right to rule this city?"

The Batman stood there like a daunting monument, cape billowing in the wind. For a moment, Diana had thought she'd won, but then he opened his mouth. "You're right." He stated simply with pause, unusually open. For a moment, Diana wasn't entirely certain he'd continue, but surely enough, he did. "But I need to do this. All the people I save, all the fear in their eyes, I need it. I need to feel like I'm doing something right, and I know that I am when I hear them whispering about me and see them looking over their shoulders into the night when they're doing things they shouldn't. So I'm giving myself the right. Maybe that's wrong, but I'm taking it anyway because no one else can or is going to give it to me."

She stared at him for a moment, ever antagonistic.

"Now leave." He repeated, again pointing a finger to the other end of the alley. "Before I take something else."

Begrudgingly, she conceded, walking off into the darkness and leaving him to be.

The Batman felt strange as he watched her storm off, and worried he had said something he shouldn't have. He wondered why on earth he had bothered to give her the time of day, when every instinct and lesson he'd learned told he should have done otherwise. Shaking the odd haze out from his head, the Batman ignored the disdainful beauty who had somehow had the arrogance to question him face to face. He reached under his cape and pressed a button on his belt. The buzz of a signal rung out quietly.

"Sherlock to Watson," The Batman began, speaking into a miniature audio link attached to his wrist. "Did you get all that?"

"Must my alias really be 'Watson'?" The old British butler still managed to sigh through all the distortion and digital voice changes.

"Answer the question, Watson." The Batman told him, utterly deadpan.

"It makes me rather dizzy to watch you, but yes, the footage recorded perfectly, as usual." Alfred answered, referring to a microscopic digital video camera attached invisibly to the Batman's mask which allowed the butler a first-person view of the Batman's activities while resting comfortably at the console within the cave.

"Good." The Batman nodded, pacing the scene. "Search the standard databases for the two unknowns. Find out who they are, and what anyone could possibly want with them."

"Any hypothesis so far?" Alfred asked politely, worried he was intruding on the Batman's complex and deeply engrossing thought process.

The Batman had already began to dissect with a surgeon's precision every minute detail around him, contemplating its position, texture, but above all, role and purpose. In moments he had a visual in his head of everything up until his arrival on the scene and how it had manipulated the environment.

The overturned garbage cans were obvious enough: the boy had been turning the corner, and as the blood on his forehead had suggested, had been struck from the side with something blunt. The boy had then tripped and fell into the garbage cans, where he had remained until The Batman appeared.

The cracks in the furthest most wall from which he had leaped had probably been a result of Bane hitting it. The woman who had argued with him had been sprawled there when he had noticed Bane reaching for the boy. This perplexed him. The cracks in the brick were still spilling dust when he'd arrived, implying that the strike had been not more than a couple seconds ago. Yet Bane was across the alley, facing the wall from an impossible distance for him to have moved in that given time. This implied that he had struck it from a distance. Yet there was nothing unusual in the vicinity of the wall that would have made for an object large and hard enough for Bane to throw and crack the wall from his remote location. Except, of course, for the woman, but her being the projectile was impossible. Had her body been the said projectile that Bane had either struck or thrown, she'd have been lucky to have a bone left in her body. Yet when he arrived, she was only sprawled on the ground, still alive and barely damaged. But she was all that lay near the wall...

The Batman switched his focus to the fallen body of Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot. He lay unconscious, and judging by the shape of his body, with a couple of broken ribs. Strangely, the ladder hanging above street level a good ten feet or so was bent outwards. Batman put two and two together and deduced that Deadshot had been thrown, hit the fire escape's ladder (which broke his ribs and knocked him unconscious), then fell to the spot where he until now remained. He also decided that he had been the one who had jumped the boy, knocking him into the garbage cans, for had Bane been the one to do it, the boy simply wouldn't have conceivably been able to pull through.

This hypothesis presented any number of inconsistencies, though. First of all, the only person, probably in the world, strong enough to have hit Deadshot as for him to be hurtled as he was would have been Bane, and as far as he could tell, Bane and Deadshot were supposed to be a unit.

"No idea yet." The Batman decided, somewhat disappointed with himself. He then noticed what looked to be a large rock in Deadshot's closed fist. "Give me a sec, though..."

The Batman, reached down and opened the thug's hand, pulling away the large rock without so much as stirring the unconscious Deadshot.

He took a moment to scrutinize the green-tinted stone, and recognized it immediately as a fist sized chunk of the jewel he'd found last night. Curiously, specs of smeared blood sprinkled the piece.

"Think I found the weapon..." The Batman grumbled, as little sense as it made. These days, Floyd had enough ammunition on him to take out a SWAT team if need be. Why on earth he would take this fragile jewel along with him only to whack a kid in the head was so beyond him he questioned its worth as a theory. However, as far as the Batman could gather, that's what had happened. The blood had yet to dry on the rock, and the boy's head had been split open when he had arrived. As absurd as it seemed, any other assumption would have simply been... illogical. Perhaps The Batman's second most hated word, right there behind 'almost'.

"Well that doesn't make much sense..." Alfred pondered, reaching the same conclusion. "Care to enlighten me oh wise and exulted one?"

The Batman stared thoughtfully at the unconscious body of Floyd Lawton for a moment, a vague idea forming in his head.

"Maybe someone else can do it for me..."


	5. Tragic

Floyd Lawton awoke to the sounds of the city and cold wind whipping in his face. He moaned, the pain in his chest, ribs and head now awakening along with him, reminding him of what had happened but not exactly giving it away. He recalled standing over a kid and then being blind sided by something. Judging by the soreness running through the majority of his body, he deduced with some certainty that he had been caught off guard by a stray locomotive.

He tried to open his eyes, but there was nothing but black to meet him. He struggled, fear and panic climbing up his spine as he felt his hands and feet were tightly and expertly bound. His breath grew fast and heavy as he writhed desperately and futilely, and soon a deep, contemptuous sneer echoed from somewhere far off.

"Do you know who I am?" The voice hissed sadistically.

Floyd tried to say something but it came out as little more than a murmur.

"I'm the worst nightmare you ever had," It continued maliciously. "The kind that made you wake up screaming for your mother..."

"W-Where am I...?" Floyd managed to sputter.

"You've got a mother, don't you?" Asked the voice, and Floyd wondered if the thing was actually just talking to itself. "Every punk should have a mother..."

"Can't see, man...what's on my face?" Floyd coughed.

"That was quite an arsenal on you, Floyd." The voice addressed him again, ignoring his question. "The .45 was nothing special, of course, but those magnums you had installed... that's combat weaponry. So you're going to fill me in on a couple of things."

"I...I think I'm bleeding, man... I need a doctor..." Floyd said, struggling a bit more with his bonds.

"You've got lots of teeth left, and I haven't even touched your tongue..." It whispered thoughtfully, and Floyd quickly subsided.

"Fine, fine man..." Floyd swallowed hard, finally identifying the voice, apprehension inside him growing stronger all the while. "I'll tell you everything you need to know...deal is... no cops, man, I walk...w-what do you say, man?"

There was that sick, quiet sneer again at the end of a cave. "You stupid punk..." It muttered.

"Wh-Wha?" Floyd gurgled in a small voice.

"I don't think you understand the situation..."

"P-Please..."

"You're not in a position to negotiate..."

"Listen, Bats..."

"Here..." splits of dull light appeared between the darkness

"Oh God, man please..." Floyd's eyes were already wide with dread as reality began to dawn on him.

"Let me show you..." The Bat slowly pulled away its hand

"Please man..."

Floyd was screaming in terror by the time the Bat's hand had been lifted from his eyes. He writhed in absolute horror as he found himself staring down the side of a building at a busy street that seemed miles away, hanging upside down precariously from a cord attached to a gargoyle on one of Gotham's tallest and oldest buildings.

"Now..." The Bat began, appearing beside Floyd and holding his own cord tightly in one hand, his feet pressed against the building and the edge of the roof, and his cape falling towards the distant ground like a black waterfall. "You're going to answer a couple of questions."

----------------------

"So let me get this straight:" Lex Luthor began, hands pressed against each other as he stared out at the Gotham skyline. "In addition to very generously leaving several million dollars worth of Kryptonite behind for the authorities last night, you're telling me now that Deadshot is missing, presumably in the clutches of some madman vigilante dressed as a bat along with **_my_** Kryptonite and more evidence than any detective with more than half a brain could possibly know what to do with. Not only that, but due to this baffling lack of anything resembling intellect in that thick skull of yours, Clark Kent walks the streets freely, knowing now that somebody's after him, negating all the effort that went into the complex task of tracking him for now and perhaps forever." Lex Luthor turned his chair to meet his employee, an impossible scowl on his face despite the restraint in his voice, Ms Wu-San perched loyally at his side. "Remind me why on earth I'm paying you."

The monstrosity known as Bane stood at the other end of the large circular table, staring down the relatively minuscule Luthor. His posture made it clear enough that the reason for his standing had nothing to do with respect for his employer, but rather he was simply too big to fit comfortably in any standard office chair. He seemed impossibly smug, like Goliath staring down his nose at David.

"My friend," Bane began eloquently, carefully enunciating every word. "You are turning a blind eye to the greater picture. In exchange for the loss of Mr Lawton, we have gained precious information."

"What? You think another look at this Gotham rodent warrants the loss of my personnel?" Luthor snorted.

"Surely you've heard the stories of other powerful men who have tried to run afoul in this city?" Bane asked, almost sarcastic as he imitated an expression of surprise. "You can not tell me this Batman is of no concern to you."

"I don't think there's a word for how little I care." Luthor frowned, rocking in his chair "He's just a psycho with some seriously deep-rooted issues. He's good at what he does: scaring thugs and morons. He is of just as little consequence to the me as any empty-pocketed activist or protestor that thinks they have a voice."

"I would not be so quick to dismiss him if I were you." Bane warned "The ways of war have clearly shown that those arrogant enough to believe they are untouchable are always the first to fall. Heed my words: there is no such thing as insignificant. A rodent he may be, but I've been observing him, just as I'm sure he has been us. He is a loose end..."

"...And you're just looking for an excuse to tie him up." Luthor cut him off, utterly unflappable. "If you've got some vendetta with this deviant roaming the rooftops Bane, I suggest you handle him on your own time instead of wasting mine. I'm paying you to succeed, not play games with other boys in costumes. So far, your worth has been questionable..."

"Pardon me?" Bane cut him off icily, startlingly intense. "What did you just say?

He swung his fist down and through the enormous circular table, and it split straight down the middle into two clean pieces, slivers and debris hurtling in every direction as it collapsed into itself. Luthor sat stone faced, hands pressing against each other as Bane ripped apart the two enormous pieces, tossing each aside with one hand and clearing himself a straight path to a Luthor who barely winced as the remains of what had once been his boardroom table nearly shattered his windows.

As Bane marched a furious straight line towards him, Luthor gestured disinterestedly, and Miss Wu-San was already in front of Bane, a razor sharp stiletto heel pressing menacingly against his windpipe. Bane looked down with contempt at her iron scowl, which was so intense it was almost cute on her petite frame, but had unfortunately served only to irritate the behemoth. She muttered something venomous in Chinese, pressing her foot harder into his throat.

"Shiva's practically begging to kill you." Luthor told him, sneering arrogantly as he leant back in his chair.

Bane snickered heavily, and in a sudden gesture, grabbed her foot in his gargantuan hand, tossing it aside firmly and catching her by surprise. Bane then heaved Luthor from his chair and up off his feet, holding him at arm's length above him, glowering up at him spitefully.

"Question my methods, question my manner, but question my worth again I will make powder of you..." Bane hissed at an indignant Luthor, just as he felt something much thicker than the heel of a shoe press against his throat. From the corner of his eye, he looked down at a smiling Lady Shiva, nestling a pistol comfortably under his chin.

"You're welcome to try and kill me." Luthor somehow managed to shrug smugly despite being a good ten feet in the air. "But you, my friend, are not faster than a speeding bullet, and I can guarantee you aren't faster than Lady Shiva."

For a moment, it seemed Bane was considering his options, which worried Luthor somewhat, but he didn't show it. Thankfully, frowning furiously and swallowing his pride, Bane finally set down the President of Lexcorp, and took a step back, ever watchful of the gun and forcing a pompous looking smile.

"Now," Luthor began anew, adjusting his tie and flattening the ruffles of his suit, turning away from the man. "Unless you have something worth while to report..."

There was a clicking noise as Shiva readied the gun.

"There is another." Bane muttered, frowning deeply.

"Pardon me?" Luthor raised an eyebrow, caught off guard.

"There is another." Bane conceded, a little louder.

Hesitantly, Luthor waved Miss Wu-San away. She seemed a little more than mildly disappointed as she returned the gun to its holster. "Well," Luthor sighed. "I'm listening."

----------------------

Clark sat on artificial grass that felt like something resembling the astroturf of a football field. He was under a tree on the front lawn of the University of Gotham City, staring blankly at an open textbook resting upon his knees and tapping his pencil against it idly, his cheek planted firmly on his fist. With a sigh, he leant back against the trunk of the tree, disregarding his notes. He could never study for very long. He always wound up reading too quickly, and knew the material better than he felt he had the right to in the time he spent on it. So he wasted hours staring at pieces of paper he'd already memorized long ago.

He peered up at the tiny bright beams pouring through the leaves above him. He remembered how much he had loved the sun once. It had felt great on his skin and did wonders for his soul. When he was younger, he'd spend all day in it, meeting it at dawn and staying with it until it fell and gave way to darkness, at which point he'd be begrudgingly called in. He'd run and jump all day without so much as breaking a sweat.

But lately, he found himself shying away from it more and more. He would never again be there to greet it. He shunned that high like a man who had given up a drug. He still remembered how utterly divine it was, but he buried and refused the feeling. To be divine was to be inhuman, and Clark's desire to be human far outweighed all temptations.

Absently, he fingered the wound on his temple that had all but disappeared. Despite how modest it seemed now, it worried him tremendously. Someone knew, and that someone was making a move.

It terrified him to even think of it. He had tried so hard to put it all behind him, to just live his life as normally as he could, but it was all catching up to him again, and as fast as he was, he couldn't outrun it.

"Does the sun not shine on this city?"A quaint voice caught him off guard, and he bolted into an upright position.

"Diana." He was embarrassingly speechless for a moment, just staring wide-eyed at her. That beauty distracted him every time they met, and it seemed improbable that he might ever get used to it. She smiled brightly at him and he blushed, bowing his head. There was a long, painful moment of silence.

"Well?" She asked again, curving an eyebrow at him.

"Huh?" He tilted his head questioningly, still feeling like a fool.

"Does the sun not shine on this city." She repeated, looking up to the plain grey sky. "I've been here for days and not once have I felt its presence."

Clark thought about it for a moment. Not once could he recall seeing a dawn or a sun-set in Gotham. The only way to distinguish between night and day was when the grey melted into black and the streets got that much rougher.

"Not really." Clark shrugged thoughtfully. "I think the sun kind of gave up on Gotham a while ago. What are you doing here?"

"Checking up on you..." She whispered, leaning in closely, brushing his curls aside, squinting and touching the scab gently. "You're wound has healed up nicely enough."

"Yeah, I don't tend to stay hurt for very long." He muttered, bowing his head.

"Hmm." She murmured absently, still pawing curiously at the wound.

Clark stole another glance, and for a moment the two locked eyes. Clark broke the gaze, backing away from her and into the tree with a frown, focused on the ground, hoping she wasn't suspicious. She only stared at him, a mildly hurt expression on her face.

She frowned, and paced the grass, as fascinated with it as Clark. "I'm not claiming to know Gotham very well...." She began after a moment of silence. "But those men last night... they weren't normal. Clark..." She paused. "What's going on?"

He regressed into himself, turning away from her and looking to the distant sky, remaining quiet for what felt like eons. "Have you ever felt..." he began with a quiet sigh. "That it was all too much? That your responsibilities, the expectations people had for you... you just couldn't handle it? That you just wanted to be another face in the crowd?"

He turned to her, a mournful look in his eye.

"Someone told me once that I was going to change the world." He muttered, shaking his head and folding his arms, absently kicking the dirt. "That I was going to be the greatest man to ever walk the earth, that I was going to be a light for thousands, millions. They told me it was my destiny to be a hero." He sneered bitterly in spite of himself, and leant against the tree. "But I didn't want that. I was just a kid; I couldn't be what they needed me to be. I had dreams, I had friends, I had a life, and here was someone I didn't even know telling me that I was meant for something else, that there was a path already set out for me. All I wanted was to be with my friends and be happy. What about my plans? I was going to work for the local paper, marry my sweetheart, have kids on a rancg and live among friends and family. Nothing big, just another faceless joe in Nowhere Kansas. Wasn't that good enough? Was that too much to ask? What right did they have to tell me who I was, what I was going to do? What business did they have telling me _my_ life had to be the one of sacrifice, that I had to be a savior and martyr for people who would feed me to the dogs for any reason at all? It's my life, and if I don't have ambition, if I just want to be happy, who the hell are they to tell me I can't be?"

Diana only stared quietly at the intense, resentful Clark, having known him for barely a day but still feeling his pain. This wasn't him. It couldn't be. She had respected him. But this...

"Maybe it's hard for you to understand," He went on, pausing for a long, heavy moment. "But I'm just no hero..." He ended sadly as though he were cutting himself off before he poured out more.

She stared at him, thinking him very odd. Her's was a mind far different from this boy. She had only read of things such as fear, she never understood or experienced its trapping. To refuse glory perplexed her, but for one reason or another, she sympathized with his lament.

A thought occurred to her then: she was what this boy had refused. She was living the life that had terrified him, which made her wonder what on earth she was missing in the absence of mediocrity. Battle and glory were all she had considered. She had thought nothing of another option before this moment.

"I... I think I do." She whispered, shaking her head. "But to fear greatness... to refuse splendor... that's tragic, Clark."

He stared out at nothing in particular for what seemed like ages, focusing on anything but her. "Tragic is trying to do the impossible." He finally muttered spitefully, walking away and leaving her to stare at his back. "Tragic is fighting for people who don't even care either way. Leave it to the fools to be the heroes. They're the ones who want it, anyway."

She made no effort to pursue him, instead leaving him to wallow on his own. She scowled furiously. He wasn't worth the effort.

----------------------

"We found him in the cell this morning..." Bullock explained, marching down a narrow corridor with empty cells on each side, fumbling for a key on a huge ring full of them. "Told us his name was Floyd Lawton. Couple of boys around the precinct recognized him and vouched for it. Said he'd tell us whatever we needed to know about the other night's smuggling operation, and admits the boys we took in our his. He's willing to cooperate fully as long as we give him protection."

"That's a little unusual, don't you think?" Gordon pondered, starring at the ground.

"Unusual seems to be the norm these days." Bullock merely shrugged.

"How are the boys, anyway?" Gordon inquired, referring to the trio of thugs from the other night.

"The two from the crane are out on the street again." Bullock sighed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "That jade we have in evidence isn't really enough to hold them to anything, so we couldn't really lay a charge yet. For a couple of punks, they had good lawyers..."

"And the other one?" Gordon asked, only mildly irritated by the news concerning the less interesting two.

Bullock took a full pause, frowning deeply. "Still no name, and still no progress." Bullock began gruffly. "Didn't say a word until nightfall, when he started up again, screaming and ranting like crazy. Wouldn't go to sleep, way too scared. Strange tried to take a look at him, but the guy just wouldn't settle. We had to sedate him finally. Strange transferred him to Arkham this morning. For the best, he said."

For a long moment, the two men said nothing, meditating grimly. The bat-shaped laceration on the man's face flashed in each of their heads, worrying them like a sword dangling over their heads. Even with nothing to sustain him but rumor and hearsay, the Batman was a dangerous fixation in Gotham, especially for the police, and here he was delivering an omen of what was to come. It definitely wasn't very pretty.

"Here he is." Bullock muttered, breaking the silence and opening a cell door for the Commissioner, who stepped in with the utmost casualty to meet with a blonde haired man sitting quietly on a cot, staring timidly at the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back

"Hey ya Floyd," Gordon began, pulling a chair opposite to the captive. "Remember me?"

"Nice to see you again, Jim." Floyd looked up amicably, a docile smile on his face. "Wife and kids okay?"

"Yeah, yeah..." Gordon nodded tiredly. "Sarah's been having trouble with all the hours, but that's nothing new. Barbara's got the highest average of any kid at her school, but she'd be embarrassed as hell if she knew I were telling you that."

"Good to hear..." Floyd leant back on the cot and against the wall. "I never got to congratulate you on becoming Commissioner, did I?"

"No," Gordon shook his head, whipping out a cigarette and lighting it. "You got caught dealing with the Maroni family a couple months before hand."

"Right, right..." Floyd remembered, frowning thoughtfully and refusing the cigarette Gordon offered him. "Anyway, if anyone deserved Commish, it's you Jim. You were one of the only good guys on a really bad force."

"Yourself included." Gordon noted, trying to maintain some semblance of authority. Corruption was far too common in the GCPD, and Gordon dealt with it so often he found himself barely holding it against Floyd. "Feeling regret for past sins?"

"Nope." Floyd shrugged indifferently, straightening himself. "Probably better that I got fired. More money in the private sector anyway. They did me a favor."

"I'll bet." Gordon frowned, leaning forward to look his former associate in the eye, the smoke dancing at the end of his cigarette. "So what's the deal, Floyd? Why the sudden change of heart? I've never known you to be the type to squeal."

"Let's just say there's no use hiding anymore..." Floyd muttered, eyes to the floor and suddenly seeming very troubled. "I've dug myself quite the hole here in Gotham, Jim. I need you to toss me a rope."

Gordon stared at him silently for a moment, arms folded and leaning back in his chair as he lulled over his former associate's words. "What's the problem?"

"I've said some things I shouldn't have..." He whispered, looking up with something resembling shame. "I couldn't keep quiet, Jim..."

"I can get you a transfer to a safer holding place in another city. Metropolis, maybe." Gordon began gruffly, slowly rising from his chair and making his way to the cell door. "The paperwork's gonna be rough, and there's a lot of red tape to cut through, but I can have you out of Gotham by the end of the week..."

"No, no, no, no..." Floyd shook his head violently, the desperation and urgency in his eyes now very apparent as Gordon opened the door and Floyd shot to his feet. "You don't understand, Jim. They're coming for me. They're gonna kill me Jim, and you can't stop them! You have to get me out of here...NOW!"

/

Officer John Flass was sitting inattentively at the front desk of GCPD headquarters, reading a newspaper and yet another superfluous yet addictive column on the infamous Batman. He hated desk duty with a passion. It was the most trivial, embarrassing job a street cop could be given, especially considering his admittedly unhealthy fetish concerning busting heads and taking names. Gordon had assumed that this would be a suitable way to get Flass to cool his jets, but not surprisingly, it only served to bottle his rage, not dull it.

His smoldering temper was so distracting that he didn't even notice how odd looking the man who had stepped into the room was.

"Can I help you?" Flass had asked absently, and they had been the last words to ever leave his throat.

/

Yells and hysteria echoed down the corridor and into Floyd's cell, stealing away the attention of Gordon and Bullock.

"Oh god..." Floyd barely whispered, his eyes wide with terror as he stumbled backwards and onto his cot. "They're here..."

After a sideways confused glance at one another, Gordon and Bullock reached for their pistols, and were already running down the long narrow hallway despite Floyd's desperate pleas, not even bothering to close the cell door behind them.

"You don't understand, you can't leave me here!" Floyd called after them, but they ignored him, thinking obliviously that these were more pressing matters. They didn't even notice the quiet clicking of heels on the floor as a petite Chinese woman walked down from the opposite end of the hallway, a sai in each hand and an impossibly at ease smile on her face as she turned the corner and entered Floyd's cell.

He only sat there, staring up at her from his cot, his jaw twitching and his lower lip trembling, acceptant but still terrified. "Make it quick, okay?" He asked meekly through grit teeth, his knuckles white as he gripped the sheets of his cot.

She shook her head no.

/

Gordon and Bullock stormed into a room that looked like it had been hit by a small tornado. Paper was still flying in every direction and scattered along the floor, while beaten, unconscious, cops littered the office like dirty clothes in a teenager's bedroom. Any intruder was long gone.

As Gordon and Bullock scanned the room, scratching their heads in confusion, a blood curling scream rang out from the holding pens. The pair exchanged terrified gazes, immediately realizing their error and forming a pretty fair hypothesis for whom the scream belonged to.

The two ran back to Floyd's cell as fast as their legs would carry them, knowing that expecting anything other than trouble was beyond any reasonable hope.

As they turned a corner, they could see a huge pool of blood seeping out from a cell with an open door, and their hearts sunk in their chests.

They came to Floyd's cell, side-stepping the red puddle to gaze in. They turned away immediately and bound their eyes shut, covering their mouths with their hands as they tried desperately to stifle their terrified gasps, gagging in revulsion as the image of Floyd Lawton's brutally carved corpse etched itself into each of their minds forever.


	6. Strange Things

**_Alright kids, I've got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is I'll be leaving in a couple of weeks, and there probably won't be another update after that for around two months. Good news is, I'll be posting everything I've written so far before I leave. That's means you're going to get up to the end of part 1, Chapter 12, in the next two weeks. That's six more chapters, plus this one. I won't be able to take the time proofreading them as thoroughly as I usually do, but I'll just make revisions when I get back. Anyway, hope you've been enjoying Trinity, and if you have, feel free to spread the word. -Roll_**

Diana watched with some fascination and a fair bit of confusion as an enormous man thundered down the road, tossing cars aside to clear himself a path through the busy street, his size making the speed at which he moved seem ridiculous.

She admitted she was unfamiliar with this city, but of all the things she'd seen thus far, this seemed the strangest. Several police cars pursued him, but the early morning traffic made driving no faster than going on foot, as the large black-clad man was proving.

The overturned cars and enraged masses didn't make it any easier. Clearly, this man they were pursuing was either looking for attention, or acting quite foolishly. For one thing, he had committed whatever crime he was guilty of in broad day light, and for another, he was carving himself a trail of destruction that no woman or even man could possibly lose sight of.

She squinted as to get a better look at the quick moving man with little success, who had now reverted to using his strong legs to leap great distances over the traffic instead of parting it out of the way, which was only slightly more reasonable. She folded her arms and shifted her weight. Men were the oddest creatures.

The lumbering behemoth stopped at the middle of an intersection as a red light came up for the street, stopping the cars behind him and consequently the police. He turned his head, and from under his mask managed to smile, and at that moment, she recognized him. The man from the other night. She scowled, a rage lifting the red into her face. She was going to break him.

The monster that was Bane grabbed the front end of one car of many that sped by him, and he stopped it, an unbreakable grip crushing the front bumper, its tires squealing protest. He pulled it into the air, and began spinning to gather momentum, the car ascending higher and higher into the air with each rotation before he finally let it fly. It sailed almost as high as the building upon which Diana stood, and as it began arcing back down towards the squad cars, she decided that this was probably an appropriate time to intervene.

The police were already fleeing when something blurry and invisible snatched the projectile car out of the sky and dropped it safely and relatively intact on the side walk. The man from inside the car exited frantically, and along with every policemen and bystander, stood in the street looking up to the sky, astounded. Divine intervention wasn't all that common in Gotham.

The blur that was Diana disappeared immediately, hunting the enormous man intently. Bane just kept on running, weaving through cars and alleys, and doing her no favors. Suddenly feeling generous, he leaped upwards and onto the rooftops, making quite a spectacle of himself. Diana merely dismissed the peculiarity of it all and took the opportunity to descend on him like a swooping eagle locked on its prey.

But he was ready.

He gave her a backhand that would have easily killed any normal man. But she was no man, and she certainly wasn't normal.

She hurtled backwards and nearly made rubble of brick wall, almost bringing a whole building down upon herself. She thoughtlessly brushed off the debris on top of her, and stood to her feet only to meet Bane, who was already primed for her. He wrapped one gargantuan hand around her entire head, and smashed it down into the gravel and brick upon which they stood, tossing up more dust and wreckage. "Pity to dent that pretty face." Bane muttered, hoping for a crunching noise: a cracked skull, or even broken nose would have sufficed, but all he got was smashed rock and broken wood.

She whipped her head backwards and into his gut, her beautiful face not even scratched. Bane was the first to make a noise, staggering backwards and clenching his abdomen. She grabbed his foot, and tossed him off the building and across the street with barely a grunt.

Bane landed on another building and smashed through a shed, bringing the roof and brick down on top of him. Diana did not relent, leaping softly and landing on the other building. She dug one hand into the rubble and easily lifted the behemoth out from it. He was dazed, and groaning loudly as she held him at arm's length while she pulled her fist backwards to throw a punch. He caught her off guard, grabbing her head in both hands and squeezing, hoping she'd pop like a zit. She grit her teeth and endured it briefly, but he brought her head down and lifted his knee into it.

Diana lost her grip and stumbled backwards, which gave an opportunity for Bane to get a running start before vaulting forwards, swinging both legs forward and missile drop-kicking her. She flung backwards, landing harshly on the lower roof of the building adjacent the one upon which Bane stood.

Bane leapt from his platform, making a dart of himself as he descended feet first towards the prone Diana. She rolled out of the way just as Bane landed, sending a tremor that cracked the roof. From under her garb she produced a thin golden lasso. She spun it over her head twice before trying to toss it over Bane's basketball of a cranium, but he wrapped his hand around the rope and pulled backwards. She was yanked from her feet and propelled towards Bane, who caught her by the back of her neck and the scruff of her pants. He smashed her head into a brick wall, but didn't let go, choosing perhaps wisely to do it again and again until finally she went numb.

He let go then, again stumbling backwards tiredly, thinking the job done. He looked exceedingly irritated as she soon emerged from the havoc, unscathed and anxious for another round.

"You, madam," Bane began with an exasperated shake of his head. "Are not worth the effort."

And then he took off, making enormous strides with his massive legs as he escaped, launching himself from building to building as fast as the eye could follow. Diana too took off, but unlike Bane, safe landing was not an issue.

Bane moved as fast as his legs would let him, leaping and climbing to higher and higher ground, giving Diana a brief run for her money. When he tried for a particularly long leap across the street, she snatched him out of the air, hitting him like a cannonball as she tried to slam him into the side of one of Gotham's tallest buildings. Bane however, clever fighter that he was, shifted his position in mid-air as to have Diana hit the wall first, crushing her quite literally between rock and a hard place.

Diana briefly crumpled as Bane sprung himself to another building and more stable ground, pausing as he waved her over. She scowled, and rose up to the building, landing gently not more than ten feet from Bane. She would not disappoint.

Naturally, Bane was the first to throw a punch, which Diana ducked gracefully, but Bane wasn't going to give her an opportunity to counter. He swung at her with a speed and agility that defied his size, throwing hooks, uppercuts and even the occasional kick. Diana could only dodge the strikes feverishly, yet expertly enough to keep her unharmed.

She came to a position in which she had no choice other than to block. Bane gave a her a thunderous straight-punch which she tried to absorb with her forearms, but despite her sure footing, the punch sent her sliding backwards, the gravel clearing from the trails left by her feet. She had not moved, she had only been displaced.

Bane put his hands on his hips and let a heavy, irritated breath escape his nostrils. He looked absently at his left wrist, at the same time taunting her and contemplating whether or not he should increase the Venom flow. No, he decided. He wasn't supposed to kill her.

She charged him, and Bane swatted away her punches and kicks with an embarrassing ease. As she tossed out a harsh hook kick, Bane grabbed her leg, lifted her across his massive shoulders, and then slammed her head first into the gravel. He went to stomp on her, but she managed to put away the pain in time to catch his foot and toss him onto his back. He rolled and was on his feet before her, but she charged him nearly as fast as a bullet.

He caught her again, this time bear-hugging her. A grunt escaped her as he tried to crush her. "Do not fight any longer." Bane hissed confidently as she writhed vainly in his hulking arms. "Sleep will take you in moments. You've already lost..."

Just then, an odd smile crept onto her lips.

"What amuses you so?" Bane inquired, his squeeze loosening just barely.

She nodded her head downwards, and Bane followed her gaze to find not stable ground underneath his feet, but rather only sky and distant images of buildings and streets far below him. It occurred to him then that he was hanging in the sky, the street level hundreds upon hundreds of yards away. She tilted her head at him, a toothy smile just short of a laugh on her face.

"Oh."

----------------------

Lex Luthor stood in front of a cart at one end of his circular board room, fixing himself a cup of tea. He stirred it absently for a moment and took a sip, an indecisive look on his face after downing it, not sure of whether or not it was satisfactory. One of the few things in Miss Wu-San's minus column was that she simply could not make a cup of tea on par to save her life. Begrudgingly, he had opted to keep her anyway in light of her lengthy list of positives.

Frowning, he took another sip, and through the corner of his eye looked at the statuesque Lady Shiva, who was staring at him coldly and intently. He visibly shivered. It was rather unsettling, and he added that look to her minus column. The list was now up to two.

He took yet another sip, and unlike Lady Shiva, the deafening shatter of an entire wall of glass behind him as an immense beast of a man hurtled through it didn't seem to disturb him in the least. The body crashed through his large round desk, reducing it to mere splinters.

"Two tables in one day..." He frowned, sighing and shaking his head disapprovingly at the unconscious Bane who lay sprawled atop the wreckage.

A gorgeous little thing flew in through the shattered glass and pinned Bane to the floor with her foot, a dominant and heroic air to her as the wind came in through what used to be Lex's wall, making quite an iconic image of her, what with her ebony hair whipping about and that perfectly sculpted figure of hers.

She tilted her head at him, her chin held high and regally, and Lex just stood there smiling dumbly, not the least bit shaken or surprised. "Tea?" He offered, gesturing to the cart behind him hospitably. She curved a curious eyebrow at him.

----------------------

Alfred Pennyworth leant back in the Batman's thick leather chair, furrowing his brow and pressing his cheek against his fist as the computer in the Batcave ran a scan of two frozen images taken from last night's footage: one of a breath-taking black haired woman, and another of a naive-looking southern farm-boy type. In the distance, Bruce Wayne exercised bare chested on a set of mats, absolutely still as he supported a handstand with only one arm, his legs extended in a horizontal split. He held the position for an unfaltering minute, and then rolled forwards into a standing position, where he began an impossibly complex martial arts pattern.

"Any luck?" He called, no hint of strain in his voice as he contorted through the air and delivered a mystifying spin kick to an invisible opponent, his body parallel to the floor.

"Positive identification on the boy." Alfred called as the computer scrolled through thousands of mugshots, stopping on the one that suited him best. The computer kept on hunting for a similar face as that of the girl "Chance of error: 0.04 %."

Almost perfect, Bruce thought to himself as he stuck the landing of a one-armed back handspring followed by a high backflip, his body straight as a board.

"Name?" He inquired, jumping to a pair of parallel bars high above his head and swinging up into another handstand.

"Clark Kent." Alfred answered. "He's a student at Gotham University. Majoring in Journalism and World History."

Bruce swung his momentum back down from the handstand and then up again, swinging forwards and upwards, backflipping through the air as he landed upright atop the bars with a foot on each pole. They didn't even shake or make a sound he was so well steadied.

The hard part was finished. Now that they had a name and a face, they could narrow down a place of origin and come up with a fairly specific profile on him, depending on how eventful or illicit his life was.

"Keep digging." Bruce called back, somersaulting off the rails and landing quietly in a crouching position.

He grabbed a bar with a pair of forty five pound plates on each end, doing quick, consistent reps as he curled it, inhaling and exhaling rhythmically and silently. He set it back down atop a bench and added a few more plates at each end. He lay down, pushed the bar up and repeated the same meticulous rhythm with his bench presses.

"Originates from a place by the name of Smallville, Kansas." Alfred read off a chart loudly, and it echoed through the cave. "Quaint little hamlet of around 40,000 people. Records show he attended both elementary and high school there. Parents are Jon and Martha Kent. Both farmers. No significant criminal record between the three of them."

"Search local paper archives for any articles related to the last name Kent." Bruce whispered, seemingly appearing out of nothingness beside Alfred, his arms folded over his muscular but scarred chest. It was something Alfred would never get used to. "Find out exactly who this hick is."

Before Alfred could turn to scold him, Bruce Wayne was already gone, looming over a work desk, analyzing a dull green rock in his hand with a scientific eye.

"Alfred..." he called, mildly confused.

"Yes sir?" Alfred answered, focused on the enormous screen of the main console.

"Have you cleaned anything since I got back?" Bruce asked, turning over his only piece of physical evidence regarding the previous night.

"I clean many things at many times, Master Bruce." Alfred called back dryly. "You must specify."

"Did you clean this?" He rolled his eyes, holding the jagged green rock up so his butler could see. Alfred swivelled his chair and squinted at the vaguely glimmering stone in the distance.

"That would be evidence, sir." Alfred explained, leaning back in the chair, seeming subtly offended. "I'm under specific instructions not to tamper with any evidence, regardless of how filthy it may be."

"That's a no, I'm guessing."

"You are a detective!" Alfred nodded sarcastically, mockingly impressed. "May I be so bold as to ask why you would accuse me of such an atrocity?"

"There was blood on it..." Bruce explained, returning it to its holding compartment and tapping at a few keys. "It's gone now."

"Perhaps you were careless." Alfred shrugged, and judging by the look the Batman gave him, had tread the most dangerous waters a joke had ever entered.

On a monitor, a close-up of the rock's surface appeared as Bruce Wayne snapped back into existence. There was nothing. He zoomed in further, but still nothing.

He was looking at it from a microscopic level by the time he found whatever it was he was looking for.

"There you are..." He whispered.

"Hmm?" Alfred murmured, having been distracted by the image of the pretty girl who even now remained nameless.

"The blood." Bruce elaborated, furrowing his brow. "It's there... it's barely residue by now, but it's there. It's deteriorating..."

"How's that?" Alfred inquired, standing from his seat and joining his master's side.

"I don't know." Bruce answered quietly, thoughtfully tapping at several keys that brought up a chart on an adjacent monitor indicating the status. "The rock and the blood are responding to one another for some reason. The radiation is fluctuating wildly, which is essentially poisoning and overloading the vesicles... it doesn't even look human anymore. White blood cells are dilating and bursting... natural and standard processes have ceased and are actually working backwards... almost all molecular activity has discontinued entirely and collapsed inwardly. There won't be a cell left by the end of the night..."

"Is it some sort of genetic disease?" Alfred wondered.

"No," Bruce muttered contemplatively, isolating a minuscule blood sample from the rock. "It's more of a chemical reaction, but not like anything I've ever seen."

"SEARCH COMPLETE." The main console rung out loudly. "163 MATCHES FOUND FOR 'KENT'"

"Looks like our little farmboy kept himself busy..." Bruce murmured, briefly ignoring the green rock and taking his seat at the main screen. He tapped a few keys, then leant back in his chair and observed as a long list of Kent-related articles took over the monitor, pressing the continuing search for a match to the pretty girl into a secondary screen. Many of the articles were penned by the boy himself, others casually made note of his involvement in a variety of local happenings. These didn't interest the keen mind of the Batman in the least, but there were several stories with dramatic contexts: car crashes, fires, even the occasional hostage situation. The boy, it seemed, was quite the adventurer.

"Alright Alfred," Bruce began, rubbing his temples with one hand tiredly. "We start sorting through these now. We check the most recent crime-related stories, then work our way outwards from..."

"SEARCH COMPLETE. MATCH NOT FOUND." A secondary console somehow dared to cut him off, flashing its words in big bold flashing red.

Bruce frowned and tapped a key. The screen snapped away and showed the image of the unidentified girl.

"Sir," Alfred began with a yawn. "We're both exhausted. I believe it would be best to get a few hours rest before embarking on such an endeavor as reading through one hundred-something articles... You, I've noticed, haven't slept in days, and you've got that dinner to attend this evening..."

"Go to bed, Alfred." Bruce absently waved him off, leaning back in his chair and squinting at the girl. "I'll be right up..."

Alfred stood in the darkness for a moment, staring with some concern at the obviously lying detective. With a weary sigh, he shook his head and disappeared into the emptiness, his slow stride resonating throughout the cave with every step.

Bruce Wayne sat alone in the darkness for what seemed like hours, staring at the image, the occasional drip-dropping of water or flapping of wings the only sounds penetrating the utter nothingness. Blackness stretched out in every direction, leaving him in what was all at once a comfortable and numbing solitude.

Frowning, he tapped at a few keys, and the image shifted to the main screen. The minuscule picture stretched out to fill the large screen, pixelating briefly before automatically cleaning up.

There was something overwhelmingly alluring about her, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it, which troubled him. Sure, she was beautiful, breathtakingly so in fact, but so were countless other woman he'd come across. What was it that made her so much more captivating, and how was it that something so enchanting could wander the streets nameless and under the radar?

"Who are you?" He pondered aloud, but the frozen image would give him no answer.

----------------------

"I am Princess Diana of Themyscira." She explained confidently, arms folded over her chest as she stood proudly, perfectly regal and eloquent. "Daughter of Hippolyta and heir to Paradise Island, I am the chosen ambassador and defender to Man's World. Born from clay, the Goddesses bestowed upon me the might to be the greatest champion of the Amazons. I am student and master to the lessons of ten thousand aunts and sisters, and I am destined to be savior of all worlds."

Lex Luthor sat in his chair, palms pressed against each other, Shiva at his side. The two stared wide-eyed, utterly baffled.

"Uh-huhhh..." Luthor said very slowly, carefully nodding his head and trying unsuccessfully to hide his befuddlement and feign comprehension. "Wow..." He exhaled quietly, turning his chair and shaking his head.

"You don't believe me?" She asked, hands on her hips, looking very much aggravated.

Lex Luthor stared blankly for a long moment, nothing to say. Ordinarily he'd have told a lie, but...

"Of course I do!" Luthor stood from his chair jovially, gathering himself before she grew overly insulted. "And let me be the first to welcome you to 'Man's World'!" He opened his arms wide and hugged her, which she found rather off-putting, but she was unfamiliar with Man's World's customs, so she dismissed it. "I'm Lex Luthor. I'm somewhat of a king in these parts." He pulled back, an artificial warm smile on his face as he grabbed her hand and shook it enthusiastically. "Sandra!" Luthor turned to Lady Shiva, a look in his eye that told her to play along. "Contact the United Nations! We must open up relations immediately!"

"I don't have time for that now..." Diana shook her head no, pulling her hand away. "I have business to attend to..."

"Well I'd be glad to toss in a helping hand, Princess." Luthor said amicably, making himself a barrier between her and her self-appointed exit. "If there's one thing I know, it's business."

"No thank you." She pushed him out of the way, but he was quick to again block her.

"Free bit of advice: If you're going to be an ambassador in 'Man's World', you'll find it's best not to alienate the United States of America." Luthor warned, the frivolity passed and back to his manipulative self. "Regardless of whatever it is you have to deal with, the fact is you are on American soil. Your business is now our business, and America loves to play big brother. You do not want to miss out on the opportunity of making good with the most powerful country in the world. It would do your cause good to share the burden, because otherwise, you may be perceived as an irresponsible danger. You wouldn't want the most powerful empire in 'Man's World' thinking that your country is a hostile nation, would you?"

She frowned skeptically. Of course, he was right, or at least he had managed to make it seem that way.

"Now," Luthor smiled, directing her to a chair at the edge of the debris in which Bane still lay and taking the one opposite her, seemingly oblivious to the wreckage between the two "Care to enlighten this humble philanthropist?"

"There are legends..." Diana began slowly, uncomfortable. "Signs and prophecies... all telling of an unearthly being who would emerge from a city of shadow to bring upon the end of days for all earths. He will set the sky ablaze and open the floodgates for a time of death and destruction, purging the world of all peace and stability. With eyes of fire and the strength to crush the weakening Atlas, he will end the equilibrium that has maintained our world. His time is near; he is almost upon us... and I am here to destroy him."

The two stared at each other solemnly for a long moment, nothing but the whipping wind bursting through the shattered glass to interrupt the quiet. Luthor seemed chillingly intense, as though she'd struck some sort of nerve. Diana couldn't help but question how the man who had doubted her earlier could have been moved by what even she had considered a fairy tale.

"Have you spoken to anyone else about this?" He asked carefully, thoughtfully.

"No." She answered with a shake of her head, uncertain of what he was getting at.

"I think I'd like to introduce you to someone." He smiled, and this one seemed genuine, if not a lot less likable. "Tell me Princess, are you busy tonight?"


	7. A night on the town

Diana, Princess of Themyscira, sat in an absurdly gaudy car that she'd been told was called a limousine. It rolled along the poverty-stricken streets of Gotham loudly, sticking out like a sore, elongated thumb.

Lex Luthor watched her in his suave tuxedo from the other end of the vehicle, a dark grin curled on his lips as he stared unblinking at her, Miss Wu-San ever statuesque beside him. Diana wore the dress he'd told her to wear, pressing the point that princesses were meant to look regal. She shifted uncomfortably, her hands resting on her thighs as she turned to look at herself in the darkly tinted window.

Although she felt incredibly constricted within it and thought it ludicrously impractical, she admitted the dress was pretty. It was a glamorous thing: an elegant, long ruby gown that flowed down to the floor and dragged behind her when she walked. It left her shoulders, neck and arms bare, and she found it quite fascinating that it managed to remain above her bosom despite the lack of straps. Luthor had lent her a necklace that shone gloriously when the light hit it, and had allowed her to keep her bracelets. He had then called in a very self-assured sophisticated woman who had done her hair and make-up, but had decided the latter unnecessary. She felt it was all too superfluous, but Luthor had insisted, noting that she'd never get another chance to make a first impression. She had complied begrudgingly.

She caught her reflection in the glass of the window. Truth be told, it wasn't being dolled up such as this that bothered her. It was that leering, animalistic quality in Luthor's eye. She did not comprehend it, but it sent a chill up her spine and made her skin go cold.

As though he read her uneasiness and decided he'd amplify it, he made his way across the limousine and sat down beside her, promptly putting his hand on her knee.

"Nervous?" He asked, that knowing smile on his face. She again squirmed as he patted her knee reassuringly, focusing on the outside of the car. "They're going to love you, trust me. Just let me do all the talking, okay? Keep quiet and just look pretty."

"Was the whole point of tonight not for me to make myself known?" She asked, not looking at him. "Why else should I wear your clothes, try to look like your people? I came here to be an ambassador, not to stand by quietly."

"It's best to introduce them slowly to this sort of thing." Luthor explained, turning to his own window. "Haven't you ever seen animals at work? If you make too big a noise too fast, you run the chance of scaring them away."

The two were quiet for a long moment, a heavy tension in the air.

"You're not scared." She noted, turning to him.

He smirked arrogantly. "I've lived through much larger creatures who've made far bigger noises than you could ever hope to, princess."

They were again silent for the rest of the trip.

---------------

Bruce Wayne stood beneath a canopy on a velvet red carpet leading towards the Gotham Ritz, an insufferable brown-haired parasite clinging to him as reporters and leeches alike snapped off shots of him and his 'bimbo of the week', calling after him incessantly. He knew then and there that never would there live a man so dedicated to a mission as he.

"Brucey!" The brunette screeched as he tried futilely to recall her name. Probably Irene, or Janine, or something else equally grating. "Be polite! The papers are calling."

"Must not have heard them..." He quipped, straining that pompous smile he'd mastered, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and turning back to face the press.

Judging by the way the girl was absolutely beaming, Bruce imagined she must have been utterly delighted. In her mind's eye, they'd have been the ultimate power couple, her in her debonair blue gown, and him in his sleek black suit, the vast Wayne fortune their's for the spending around the world. He almost felt bad for her, knowing that nothing would ever result from this throwaway evening. It was just another night, just another girl to keep up the image. It was terrible of him, he admitted, to bait them like this. Every last one of them were convinced they'd be the one for him. Clever that he was though, he only dated the most irritating, shallow women, which made it fairly easy not to feel guilty about never calling them again.

He pretended to pretend to look indifferent for the cameras, posing absently and making quite the snot-nosed brat out of himself. Bruce took some satisfaction in the thought of Alfred desperately suppressing a laugh at the absurdity of it all. The press, on the other hand, melted for him, begging him for a brief glance, or God-forbid a billion-dollar smile.

That was until, of course, Lex Luthor's limo pulled up. The woman Bruce recognized as Lady Shiva emerged, wearing her own relatively simple dress. She held the door open for an impossibly confident Luthor, who waved and pointed to the photographers amicably. He then reached his hand into the car, and for a moment, all the noise, all the flashbulbs, and all the clamor fell absolutely dead to stop and gaze upon divinity.

The press stared dumbfounded at Diana, jaws hanging to the pavement, arms limp, weak and useless at their sides as she did nothing but stand there. Time simply stood still as she shifted under the unblinking gazes. She didn't like this very much, being put up for all to see. She particular disliked the man in the black suit standing directly across from her. There was a different kind of look in his eye than all the others. There was nothing feral about it. There was no awe, no admiration. Just cold, dead, mechanical calculation and analysis. The others could not comprehend the existence of someone such as her, but it seemed as if he certainly could. It wasn't human, and it certainly wasn't Amazonian.

As Luthor wrapped one arm around her waist and pointed her down the red carpet, the press erupted in a frenetic explosion of desperate pleas for attention unlike anything Bruce Wayne ever heard.

Luthor stopped in front of him, and looked the man's companion up and down. "Looks like I win, Bruce." Lex smiled arrogantly.

"Looks like it." Bruce whispered, staring intensely at the girl on Luthor's arm. Neither of the two girls liked that very much, and Bruce's date even went as far to elbow him furiously in the ribs. He didn't seem to notice.

"What's your name?" Bruce asked abruptly, his eyes frighteningly reserved and painfully unsettling.

"It's Diana." Luthor answered for her, cocky smile beaming. He adored upstaging Wayne. "She's a princess, you know."

"Really?" Bruce raised his eyebrows, and Diana was rather disturbed by how quickly his manner changed. "Which kingdom?"

"Small new place." Lex shrugged before she could say. "You wouldn't have heard of it."

"Hmm." Bruce nodded skeptically.

"Well if you'll excuse us Bruce, I think it's best we get out of the cold." Luthor turned and smiled to Diana, who was focused on this mysterious 'Bruce'. "Miss." Luthor nodded to the brunette at Bruce's side, who looked about ready to explode.

As Luthor lead Diana into the building, Bruce Wayne stood quietly pondering, despite the continuous upset yelling of the still-nameless brunette beside him.

/

"Straighten that tie, will ya?" Sam called, nervously checking over the various platters on the table.

"Would you take it easy, Sam?" Clark chuckled, fixing his tie as he poured someone a glass of wine. "If you're not careful, you're gonna sweat all over the food."

Sam scowled at him, took a step away from the table and wiped at his brow with a handkerchief. "I think this suit's shrunk..." He muttered, pulling at his tight red vest.

Clark and Sam found themselves in the middle of what might have been the most important dinner of the decade, if the lavish ballroom looking over the Gotham skyline and the constantly rising attendance of Gotham's elite were any indication. They stood opposite the head table, a plethora of exquisite food spread in front of them that far exceeded anything Clark would have guessed Sam was capable of. Apparently, Sam was an expert chef when he wanted to be, but preferred the simplicity of Burger Joints and diners. However, when it came to Bruce Wayne, it seemed Sam was more than willing to pull out all the stops.

The main entrance burst open, and two of the free world's most powerful men strode in like capitalist royalty, waving politely and fraternizing with the amassing crowd in front of them. Clark watched with some amusement as the two pairs wove their way through the crowd easily, wide artificial smiles greeting everyone they came across. They'd make marvelous politicians.

He looked over Wayne's date first, who looked like she'd have a very unappealing attitude, and then he looked over to Luthor's companion, and stopped dead.

However beautiful she may have been in his mind before hand, the Diana Clark lay eyes on then was that much more. His gaze was locked, as were all other's who happened to fall upon her. Luthor had found himself quite the catch, and Clark felt a pang that surprised him.

"Bruce my man!" Clark heard Sam yell, and turned to find Sam marching up to the playboy. "Come here kid! "

Sam then bear-hugged the thought-to-be snobbish Bruce Wayne, leant back, and lifted the billionaire off his feet. Wayne let out a very genuine, happy laugh which was strangely unfamiliar as everyone turned to look at the two chums.

"Whoa, you been working out kid?!" Sam chuckled, setting Wayne back down onto his feet and giving him a few playful jabs to the chest. "The guy's built like a brick house! You're lucky, lady." Sam slapped Wayne's date on the arm, who winced uncomfortably

"Nice to see you again, Sam." Wayne nodded, trying to contain a beaming smile. The flashes of this grin were oddly refreshing, and Clark wondered why he didn't make use of it more often. "Food looks great."

"You were expecting anything else?!" Sam asked, hand on his hips. "Come on kid, have I ever let you down? At least promise me you'll eat some of it this time."

"I don't know..." Bruce looked to the floor chuckling, hands in his pockets, a little embarrassed. "We brick houses have to watch our figure..."

"Awww come on..." Sam pressed again, jabbing him in the sides. "When have I ever served you a bad meal?"

Bruce tilted his head thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged. Sam had got him.

"Oh!" Sam remembered something, and stole Bruce away from the crowd, leading him straight to Clark. "This here's Clark Kent. Like a son to me, this one."

Bruce Wayne's smile dimmed as he regarded the boy, and Clark felt quite put upon. "Nice to meet you, Clark." The billionaire extended his hand politely, a thoughtful air about him.

"Nice to meet you too." Clark shook the hand hesitantly, forcing a smile. "Sam never stops babbling about you. If he thinks of anyone as a son, it's you."

"I guess that makes you two like brothers, huh?" Sam chuckled, grabbing the both of them around their necks in his big arms.

"Sam?" Bruce interjected, his voice muffled from beneath Sam's hairy flab as Luthor waved him over.

"Yeah?"

"You gotta let go." He chuckled politely, half out of necessity and half out of discomfort.

"Oh, sorry." Sam released the two from his grip and took a step back, barely containing his joviality.

"No problem." Bruce grinned, flattening the wrinkles of his suit and readjusting his tie. "Luthor and I have to address the crowd, but I'll see you later, okay? Nice seeing you again." Bruce waved absently at the two of them, and made his way to the head table, where Luthor, Diana, and whoever Bruce's date was were already waiting.

"Ladies and Gentlemen." Luthor began, tapping at the microphone as Bruce took his seat. "I hope you've been enjoying yourselves thus far. I'd like to thank Sam's diner for the wonderful catering." Luthor paused and rose his glass to Sam as the polite applause began. Sam bowed happily, his big round face a bright red. "As you know, we are here to celebrate the commencement of a partnership... who am I kidding, a brotherhood that I hope will go down in the books as one of the most famous and profitable of our era. Together, Lexcorp and Wayne Enterprises will rejuvenate the stagnant American economy, building and ensuring a safer tomorrow for generations to come, and creating thousands of jobs for all peoples throughout the world on every frontier. Oh, and it's going to do wonders for your stocks, too." Luthor paused and smiled as the aristocrats all laughed heartedly. Bruce rolled his eyes. "Seriously though," He called for silence with a raised hand. "I couldn't be happier to be the one to lead you all to incomparable heights that this affiliation is going to take us. And honestly, I couldn't ask for a better guy to help me do it."

He grabbed a distracted Bruce's hand and pulled him onto his feet, shaking it vigorously. Bruce pretended to blush as Lex opened his arms for a hug. He shrugged and indulged him to overwhelming applause. The two separated, and waved happily at the delighted stock holders.

"This is your last chance on the military deal, Wayne." Lex whispered though his teeth, an incomprehensibly large fake smile on his face as he pumped his fist in the air. "I'd hate to see you miss out on something this huge."

"Bite me, Lex." Bruce muttered under his breath through an equally artificial smile, holding up Luthor's hand in a sign of victory. "Now," He began, addressing the crowd and gesturing for them to cease their applause. "All work and no play makes us all dull boys and girls, right? Now that this corporate snooze-fest is out of the way, let's have ourselves some fun!"

He gestured emphatically to the formal band across the room, and they began playing a cheerful, quick-moving classical piece.

Diana watched from the head table as Bruce and Lex made their way down to the floor, gliding swiftly amongst the underlings, yet again straining their smiles as they made polite small talk with anyone who managed to grab a hold of their hands.

She noticed Clark Kent from across the room, sitting by himself, straightening his blue and red uniform idly and looking around at the horde of peevish, menial aristocrats who were none the less above him. He seemed rather lonesome, like the little child who's parents had left to occupy himself at an adult party they'd had no choice but to bring him to.

She pondered him for a moment, pained by the mere idea of wasted potential. She liked the boy, she really did, but she despised what he was doing with himself. He was as good or better than anyone in this room, and he sat there sulking, content with mediocrity. She had decided there and then that she wouldn't waste anymore thought on him, but then again, she was already cutting her way through the danse floor toward him.

"Good to hear it's going so well for you, Drake." Bruce was in the middle of saying to a middle-aged couple and their eight-year old son as Diana accidentally shoved him out of the way, nearly off his feet. He gathered himself quickly, his eyes drawn curiously to the assertive woman.

Clark was staring at the floor absently when two slender feet filled the particular space he had been focused on. He looked, and immediately stood up. He hung there awkwardly with his mouth open, wanting to say something as she looked at him almost bashfully.

"You look great." He finally managed to say, still taken aback slightly.

"Thank you." She nodded her head politely, a grin tickling the corners of her mouth.

"So..."He began, looking down unto her gown. "Princess, huh?"

"Just on the side." She noted bowing her head. Word had spread quickly all around the ball room, and she was getting tired of the term. Apparently, it had different connotations here than it did back home.

"Still, I guess I should be honored." He smiled, and made a bit of a joke about it as he bowed courteously. She laughed lightly as he grabbed her hand. "Not everyday royalty shines down upon Gotham."

"Or anything, for that matter." She said.

"Still no sun, huh?" He asked, shaking his head.

"No." She shook her head, a soft frown weighing down her face. "I'm beginning to suspect this city belongs to the night alone."

"Excuse me." someone said, tapping Diana on the shoulder and breaking her gaze. Clark couldn't quite decide whether or not he was relieved, until of course he saw to whom the voice belonged

"Hi." Began Bruce Wayne with one of a thousand meticulously engineered smiles, infinitely smoother than Clark. "I noticed you from across the room and couldn't help but notice you hadn't noticed me." He said wryly, offering the girl his hand. "Bruce Wayne. We met outside."

She accepted it warily after a moment of pause, looking him up and down with a critical, familiar eye. "Diana." She said carefully. There was something false and overly-deliberate about him she didn't like. His feet weren't even touching the crack of the tile, for Harah's sake, as though he would tolerate no imperfection.

"Are you new to Gotham?" Bruce asked politely, hands in his pockets. Clark noticed how remarkably pale he was in comparison to Diana, who practically glowed. "I don't think I've ever seen you at any of these socials, and I've got a pretty good eye for faces. Especially for one like yours."

She stared at him silently, but his resolve seemed unshaken.

"Lex tells me you're a princess." He continued, doing his best to subtly gather a profile of her. "Where from? Maybe I know your father."

"I doubt that very much." She scoffed with a sort eminence that irritated him. Typical of spoiled nobility, he thought. Luthor hadn't been lying.

"Anyway," he said, masterfully brushing it off. "Maybe I could show you around the city some time. Lex, I love him to death, but the guy's a square. I'd hate for him to have you leave my city with a sour taste. I could show you the night life, if you like. This place is a jungle, if you know where to look."

"I've seen it." She told him, unimpressed and mildly annoyed as she tried to return her attention to Clark.

"You really think so?" He grinned knowingly. "That's awfully naive of you."

She turned back to him and glared.

"You must be new if you think you've actually seen all there is to see in this city." He said plainly, a layer of charm and wit falling away. "Either you haven't been looking long enough, or you haven't been looking hard enough." He paused intensely, and Diana was certain that Bruce Wayne had left when she had turned her back and had been replaced by someone equally as familiar but far more difficult to place.

"Probably for the best." He shrugged, applying another trademark grin. "Gotham's got some teeth. If you're not careful, you're going to end up in a nasty scrap." He warned purposefully as the band began a slower piece. "Better to stick to the princess stuff..."

She tilted her head curiously at him as he turned to leave, but none other than Lex Luthor and his assistant snuck up on him, wrapping one arm around his shoulders.

"Trying to put the moves on my lady, Bruce?" Luthor smiled jokingly. "Honestly, isn't one woman enough?"

"Look who's talking." Bruce smiled patronizingly, one eye on a Lady Shiva who wore a cruel smile as she looked at him. "Nothing is ever enough, Lex."

"I know what you mean." Lex nodded, raising his glass to the air as he wrapped an arm around Diana's waist. "You can never have too much. Beautiful song, eh? I feel compelled to dance, don't you princess?" He asked with a speed in his voice that astounded the three of them. "If you'll excuse us." He maneuvered her back through the crowd and onto the dance floor, saluting and winking at Clark over his shoulder.

Clark and Bruce both stood there for a moment, staring with some bitterness at Luthor. Bruce stole a glance as Clark got back to work, cleaning the plates. Bruce knew or would know what he needed to regarding Kent. He was not going to miss a rare opportunity to investigate this mysterious 'Diana'.

"How about you?" Bruce addressed Miss Wu-San, who regarded him coldly. "Do you dance?"

She looked him up and down for a moment, then nodded slowly, offering him her hand. Bruce literally waltzed his way into the middle of the dance floor and within ear shot of Luthor and his lady friend.

"You really shouldn't wander off on your own..." Lex said to her as he lead her gracefully through a dance. "You never know what kind of creep you might come across."

"Wayne?" She inquired, distracted by the grace of the music and all the pretty pairs promenading around her.

"Bruce?" Lex laughed. "He's harmless. A clown, really. That Clark Kent though, him you should watch out for. Dangerous freak, that kid."

"Huh?" She inquired, so taken aback she stumbled a step.

"I've got some news for you, darling." Lex said, pulling her closer to him. "You know that 'fiery-eyed monster' you've been after? Well, you've already found him."

He dipped her, and she whipped her head backwards to see Clark, pouring himself a drink.

"W-What?" She stuttered, her voice barely a whisper, and Bruce had to navigate himself and his partner closer to pick it up, which wasn't easy, because Miss Wu-San seemed pretty intent on leading. "You can't be serious..."

"Trust me dear, there aren't many thing that can do the sort of things you were talking about where I come from."

"He's just a boy..." She shook her head slowly.

"Appearances can be deceiving." He whispered. "Our boy Kent puts up a good front, and I can't blame you for being skeptical. That nice-honest-kid-from-Kansas bit he does is really convincing. I've fallen for it myself before, but I've been fooled too many times by now. I want to believe he's good, and God knows I've tried getting close to him, but he's all black and inhuman inside. The closer you think you are is just that much more you're going to wind up bloody...beaten...dead."

Bruce furrowed his brow, staring at Sam's surrogate son from across the room. Luthor could be as manipulative as anyone, but what was the purpose and meaning of this?

Bruce and all others in the room refocused on the central pair as Diana shoved Luthor away from her, tears almost in her eyes as the crowd around the two began to buzz. "I don't believe you." She shook her head defiantly.

"Princess..." He said with an uneasy smile, raising his hands in a defensive pose as he looked worriedly at the chattering aristocrats around him. "You're making a scene." Slowly, he reproached her and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. "It's difficult to grasp, I know." He whispered sympathetically, leading her out of the dance floor and towards an exit. "But I know Kent. I've seen what he does to people who try to care for him. I've seen the way you looked at him, and the way he looked back at you. I don't want you getting caught up in him. He'll hurt you, princess. Badly."

"I..." She began, distraught and trembling slightly as he lead her through a door and into an empty hallway.

"I know this seems a tad overwhelming..." He said, quickening his strides as he made his way to the elevator, nearly dragging her along. The doors slid open and accepted them in as he reached into his pocket and pressed a button on a remote without her noticing. "...But I'm going to show you something that will change your mind completely."

/

Bruce was weaving his way through the thick crowd alone, Miss Wu-San disappearing through the kitchen upon being abandoned. He needed to follow Lex and Diana. There was something seriously twisted about all this.

Just as he was off the dance floor, a tapping across the room from the panoramic windowed wall overlooking Gotham made him take pause. He froze in mid-stride, and turned to look just as the twenty something large windows shattered in a loud explosion of glass as heavily armed, kevlar uniformed soldiers burst through each of them, a large assault rifle for each and protective masks over their faces. They landed on their feet, pointing their guns on the crowds as the head of the squadron stood to his full massive height.

"Ladies and Gentleman." Began Bane, a sadistic grin on his masked face. "This concludes our evenings festivities. Exits are to the left, right, and back of the room, but you won't be using those. I feel it's only fair to warn you that this no robbery or hostage situation. This is a mass execution; a slaughter; a cleansing of the elite from filthy reality, if that serves you. Don't bother trying to run, you'll just die faster and more painfully. Finally, I hope you enjoyed your dinner..." He paused, looking over the dead silent, terror-stricken crowd. "I regret to inform you it will be your last."


	8. Bullets with meaning

A thousand thoughts were running through Diana's head as Lex Luthor led her down a narrow hallway and into an empty security cabin, a large console with a couple dozen monitors up against the wall. She was confused to say the least, and a little bit panicked, which of course only added to her befuddlement. Why did she feel like this? How could Clark, someone so innocent and meaningless be the very thing that she was sent to destroy? Most importantly, why did it matter?

"We'll be safe here." Lex informed her as he checked this was indeed the room he'd been looking for. Safe from what, she wasn't sure.

"What's going on?" She demanded sternly as Luthor continued to examine the room frantically.

"Something serious is happening upstairs." He explained, an odd sort of excitement in his voice. "Best we lay low until it's over and done with."

He turned to face her, and her hand was at his throat, lifting him into the air. "Be more specific." She ordered impatiently through grit teeth as he smacked futilely at her arm, gasping for air.

She dropped him to the floor, and he landed on his rear, rubbing his throat tenderly. He glared at her icily, but she only loomed over him, hands on her hips. Lex Luthor was not one to easily tolerate someone putting themselves above him. "I'm proving something to you." He explained sourly, quietly retaining his fury.

"What's that?" She folded her arms menacingly as Lex returned to a standing position, straightening his suit.

"That your little boy blue is everything I say he is." He said, sitting down at the console and tapping at a few keys. Footage of Clark Kent doing the most peculiar things appeared on each monitor. In one video, he snatched a car falling off a bridge in a literal flash, placing it down gently and without strain on safe ground. In another, a vicious, icy gale wind put out an enormous fire. In another, his eyes glowed a red as fervent as the fire had on the adjacent monitor, melting away at a solid steel door.

"Lex..." She began worriedly. "What is this?"

"Proof." He smiled.

Diana watched in a quiet horror at the tapes, shaking her head, disillusioned. "I...I..." She began, hoping useful words would just fall from her lips without any effort on her part.

"There's far more where that came from." Lex smiled, tapping at a few keys of the console. The footage was replaced in every monitor by different angles of the ball room they had occupied earlier that night, only the casual and peaceful atmosphere was somewhat skewed by a baker's dozen men who held guns on the distraught crowd. "You're about to get a live show." Luthor added just as the men pressed down on their triggers.

/

Time seemed to stand absolutely still for Bruce Wayne as the dozen gunmen slowly pressed down their triggers. "Get down!" He yelled, and the lucky ones were the ones to listen to him.

The crowd erupted into screams when the first bullets left the guns and hit the first line of people, Bane's cruel laugh ringing clearly none the less. The men and women dispersed in a desperate, random panic like a school of fish under attack. Bruce grabbed the two people nearest him and dove sideways behind the elevated head table, bullets barely missing his feet.

He sat back to the table, trembling slightly and quickly checking the terrified pair which he feared would be the only ones sparred tonight. His heart beat loudly and ferociously in his chest as he took quick, deep breaths, trying to shut out the screams and gunfire as he rapidly considered his options, but with no tools, no suit, no plan, they were few. If he could just get out of the room and make it to the car...

A scream as a bullet punctured flesh reminded him that privilege was not available. He looked to the man and woman he'd saved, a disoriented and petrified look to each of their eyes. If he were to act now, they might begin to make a connection. If Bruce Wayne were to be anything other than a hedonistic buffoon, someone might suspect something. Too many risks, too many factors, too many men to take out without weaponry or loss of life...

/

Clark Kent grabbed Sam and flung himself over a table. He put his hands over his ears and let out a scream, the gunshots exploding impossibly loud in his head. This was bad. _Really bad..._

/

Diana gasped and retreated a step as the first bullets left the barrels and pierced flesh.

"You're mad!" Diana yelled at an indifferent Luthor. "You do this to your own people?!"

"It's a necessary evil." Luthor shrugged aloofly. "And don't you dare try to lump me in with those bottom-feeders. They're useless and perfectly expendable, not an once of vision or ambition between them."

"But why?" She demanded.

"Just shut up and watch."

/

The couple Bruce Wayne had rescued was old, their hair a dark grey. They clung to each other, hands grasped with one and other's, eyes locked on him, pleading, begging, fearful. Their names escaped him, but there was a definite familiarity about them. They'd lived happy lives, he could tell, and the possibility of those lives ending tonight was not welcome to them.

He attempted to soften his gaze as he leant back against the table, to make them believe this was all going to be okay, but he had never been one to be good with comforting lies. Didn't matter. He supposed they wouldn't be able to hear him over the gunfire anyway.

He bound his eyes shut, and tried to steady his racing heart. He listened carefully as his breaths slowed and grew less heavy, building an image of the entire room in his head by sound alone. He accounted for everything: footsteps, the shattering of the marble above him, the directions from which the gunfire was coming and going, the position of each scattered assailant and bystander and how he could disarm and debilitate each and everyone one of them without death, and do it quickly. It was almost impossible, all things considered.

_Almost_.

His heart arrived at a slow, stable rate as calm finally overtook him, rationality and awareness finally in control. He took one last look at the old couple.

Ready.

"Run." He whispered to them as he grabbed a steel tray off from the top of the table and tossed it high into the air, drawing raised fire from the soldiers and away from the escaping couple. He immediately hopped to his feet and hunched, pressing his back against the underside of the table. He stood to his full height, and fell backwards off the raised platform, crushing two gunmen underneath the table. He followed his momentum and rolled backwards off the table and onto his feet, as two more gunmen from opposite sides of the room began to turn towards him. He quickly tore the protective helmets from the heads of the downed pair, and jumped backwards into the air, body parallel to the floor as he all at once dodged gun fire and tossed the helmets. They hurtled through the air and knocked the firearm out of each of the gunmen's hands.

As Bruce fell towards the floor, he pulled his legs back and kicked the tops of the heads of the two beneath the table. He heard two grunts, and then nothing. Two down.

He kicked up into a crouching position, grabbed each of their guns by the barrel and tore them from their comatose grip as the two he had disarmed earlier rushed him from both sides, each wielding a knife. He shoulder rolled to his feet as one stabbed downwards at him. He kicked away a jab from the second and ducked a sideways slice from the first. He didn't have time for this. More soldiers would notice him soon.

He swung the handle of one of the rifles upwards, knocking the helmet up off one of the knife-men's head, and did the same to the man behind him with his foot. An arm and a leg both already up in the air, he twisted his body, bringing the handle of the gun down and across one's head and his foot upon the other's. They tumbled sideways, and didn't move. Four down, he noted as he tossed the guns aside.

/

Clark Kent bit down hard on his lip, burying his fingers in his ears. It was so loud, so painful all around him.

/

A trio of gunman heard something hitting the floor and turned to find nothing but four downed men. They ran to examine the quartet, checking for signs of life, which were thankfully present. They didn't stand a chance at hearing Bruce Wayne behind them, the unofficial epitome of stealth and efficiency.

Taking a running start, Bruce leapfrogged over the head of the soldier who took up the rear, pulling his helmet off as he ascended over him. The other two barely turned in time to have a foot smash through each of their visors and into their faces. They crumpled to the floor as Bruce landed on his back, driving both of his feet up into the exposed head of the still-standing gunman. He too collapsed. Seven.

Bruce looked backwards from the floor, and realized the remaining five would not be so easy as a trio of men pointed their guns at him. He quickly kicked up onto his feet and dove over and behind a table, bullets nipping at his heel. As he sat up, the element of surprise spent and his heart rate catching up with him, he poked fingers through several bullet holes in his shirt that had miraculously missed his flesh. Now Bruce Wayne was not one to believe in luck, but he couldn't think of another word to explain that.

As the footsteps grew closer, ominous like the tolling of a bell, Bruce took a millisecond to ponder his situation. A wise man had once warned not to bring a knife to a gunfight, but a knife-wielder would have still been at more of an advantage than the unarmed Bruce.

That wasn't fair. Bruce was anything but unarmed. His brain was in perfect working order.

/

Clark Kent bit down harshly on his lower lip, trying to ignore the deafening howl in his head as Sam shook him by the arm.

"Get yourself together, kid!" Sam hollered over the gun fire "We've gotta make a break for it!"

Clark couldn't hear him. The thunder of the gunfire and the echoing of screams were far too shrill to allow him to even move.

"Clark!" Sam pleaded, shaking him harder, when he felt the barrel of a gun press up against the back of his head.

"On your feet and put your hands in the air." A voice uttered to a petrified Sam.

/

Bruce Wayne rolled backwards and under a table as two of the soldiers reached their guns over it. Sweeping their feet out from under them and kicking the table up into their faces, Bruce was on his feet and already hurtling them into the chest of the third man when the two crashed into the table, falling to their knees. Bruce quickly tore away their helmets and tossed his weight backwards, grabbing the third man's head between his ankles and flipping forwards, overturning the man and hurtling him upside down over the table and into the wall. Bruce kicked that man's very helmet up from between his feet and into the air before again striking it forward like a cannonball into the man's face just as he turned to meet him, all the while smashing the helmets in his hands into the skulls of the two gunmen nearest them. The trio crumbled. Ten down.

Bruce turned and found that the remaining two gunmen were on opposite ends of the room, paying him no attention and turning their guns on two separate groups of people: The Drake family, and then Sam. They seemed poised to fire, and Bruce found himself with a difficult decision to make: the lives of the Drake family vs. the life of an old friend. As much as Bruce hated it, he had to play the numbers. He hoped he'd have time for both.

/

"What are you trying to prove?!" Diana screamed, almost pleadingly to a perfectly at ease Luthor.

"I've known Clark Kent for a lot longer than you, princess." He said casually, focused intently on the mayhem as he swayed back and forth in his chair. "When things like this start to happen, he tends to do the most amazing, inexplicable things. He's a little slow on the uptake today, though. "

"This is insanity!" She claimed.

"This is necessity." He retorted as a middle-aged man at gun point filled one of the screens.

/

"Keep 'em where I can see 'em, old man." Muttered the gunman through his helmet, the weapon's barrel a mere inch from Sam's face.

"Please..." Sam said quietly, cross-eyed as he stared at the tip of the gun, sweating more bullets than he was comforatble with and worried he was about to get another. "I got kids..."

"Sorry," The man shrugged, straightening the gun. "It's just my job. Nothing personal."

"Clark..." Sam whispered desperately.

/

It appeared there would be no time to spare as the man managed to get off a shot just as Bruce Wayne kicked the gun up and out of his hands from behind. While Bruce caught the barrel of the gun and swung it like a baseball bat across the man's head, he saw Jack Drake crumple to the floor, blood seeping from a bullet wound in his shoulder as his wife let out a startled shriek.

"You okay?" Bruce asked quickly as the gunman smashed into the floor and Mrs Drake dropped to her knees, at a loss for what to do.

"Don't worry about me..." Jack nodded bravely, pressing a handkerchief against the wound and waving away his wife, who looked up at Bruce as though he were a hero or something like that. When the young Drake heir briefly caught his gaze, admiring, wet, thankful eyes locked on him, Bruce was certain he'd made the right choice.

Bruce sprinted across the room, a shot yet to be fired at Sam. He still had time, but the man was squeezing the trigger. He could make it if he jumped...

/

Clark sat absolutely still on the floor. The gunfire had quieted, and just when he thought it was safe to open his eyes and ears again, a gunshot sounded, and Sam fell to the floor beside him.

/

Bruce was blind sided in mid stride before he could make it to the gunman, and hit so hard he skid across the floor towards the shattered windows. He had to catch a column of a frame in both arms to keep from dropping to his death as he slid off from stable ground and into empty night air. Holding to the column for dear life, he swung the continuing momentum of his legs around through the air and in through the other side of the column, rolling away from open air and further into safer ground.

He looked up to find his attacker standing across the room, tapping at a few keys of a machine on his wrist. His muscles began to balloon out further as a small amount of fluid began to flow visibly within his surgically connected tubes, body growing alarmingly and unnaturally, his veins bulging a discolored purple. He let out a primal roar as the growth finally ceased, leaving him at least twice the size of his already massive self.

"Hello again." Greeted the mammoth Bane, cracking his knuckles sadistically.

At what was either the most convenient or inopportune time, four of the Gotham Ritz's security guards burst through one of the double door entrances of the ballroom, guns pointed at Bane.

"Freeze!" they hollered as they took firing positions.

Bane smiled and turned away from Bruce Wayne, walking a straight line towards them.

"Freeze!" They repeated, but Bane kept on walking.

/

"On your feet, kid." The man muttered to a Clark in complete shock, eyes wide as he stared at the still body of his dead employer.

"I said on your feet!" The man yelled.

Clark ever so slowly rose to his feet, hands in the air.

/

Bruce noticed the lone remaining gunman on the other side of the room, pointing his gun at a numb Clark Kent, yet again finding himself with a difficult choice to be made. Clark was probably worse off than the armed men, and was definitely something important about him. Instinct getting the better of him, Bruce shot to his feet and ran to the opposite end of the room.

Just as the man was about to pull the trigger, Bruce arrived and kicked the gun side ways out of his grip. It spun in the air, and Bruce caught it with his right hand, at the same time kicking away the man in the chest. Bruce held the gun in a straight line with the man's head, who took off his helmet and put his hands up.

Something hit Bruce then. The man had had the gun pointed on Sam earlier, not Clark. Bruce quickly looked over the table and found the round cook laying in a puddle of blood on the floor, eyes wide and empty. Something very unpleasant rose up in the pit of Bruce Wayne's stomach then, and he found himself again losing control over the slow methodical beating of his heart.

Bruce Wayne suddenly realized how easy it would have been to shoot this murderer dead in the face. Considering the high-quality of the gun, the helmet and visor wouldn't have mattered either way. The man was just trying to appeal to Bruce's sympathy as a human being from one to another in taking it off. Bruce found nothing worth saving in the man's eyes, and it became much easier to imagine this mercenary dead on the floor as a flood of memories and images rushed into his head, memories and images of Sam's family, of Sam serving him hot dogs when Bruce and his own family would go to the diner for supper after a movie.

People would have suspected something if Bruce Wayne didn't shoot this man dead in the head. The relationship he had with Sam was known well enough, especially after the scene earlier tonight. No one would have held it against him; no one would think him wrong. Self-defense. Bruce Wayne was justified. Bruce Wayne had been emotionally distraught. It was understandable, really, the man deserved it. Bruce Wayne...

But he wasn't Bruce Wayne. He was Batman.

He struck the man across the face with the barrel of the gun, and he fell to the floor, unconscious. He took deep breaths, steadying his pulse. Now there was still Bane to handle. Clark would have to wait.

/

"Floor him!" A guard hollered, and the team opened fire on Bane to little success. The bullets merely bounced off of him, or at best only embedded themselves halfway into his chest, the ends still poking out.

Bane chuckled, amused as the security team continued to press down on their triggers futilely. He walked a slow, poised pace, the bullets of no consequence to him. He locked his hands together and swung them over and behind his head, preparing to take down all four men with one fell swoop, when something like a missile hit him in the back of the leg. He barely faltered, turning to find Bruce Wayne laying on the floor after having drop-kicked him, looking a little surprised that Bane was indeed still standing. Bane shook his head disapprovingly.

Bruce Wayne rolled sideways onto his feet as Bane lifted and dropped his massive boot in an unsuccessful attempt to crush him. Bruce sprinted at the wall and sprung himself off of it and into the air, tossing a kick at Bane that would have taken off his head had he not been ready for it. Bane caught the billionaire by the leg, swung him around and tossed him at the security team, leaving all five men in a mess on the floor.

"Fool me once, shame on you." Bane began, lifting a stray gun from the floor and pointing it at a distraught Bruce Wayne. "Fool me twice, shame on me."

/

Clark stared down at Sam and the unconscious gunman. There was not a thought traveling through his head.

/

"What are you waiting for, Clark?!" Luthor screamed at the screens, patience long ago worn thin. He had not anticipated this many casualties.

"What do you expect form him?!" Diana yelled back.

"A show, an appearance, something!" Luthor countered, furious. "Where's your sense of duty, Clark?! Why don't you act?!" He roared at an image of the boy staring down the flattened gunman, his body numb with shock. Luthor gathered himself, taking deep, fierce breaths. "If you won't do something, I'll make you." He hissed, and pressed a button on his walky-talky "Bane, find the boy and shoot him."

Luthor turned expecting to receive another argument from Diana, but instead only found rubble littered along the floor, and dust and debris spilling from a large hole in the ceiling.

/

Bane seemed to pause and frown as a buzz Bruce recognized as the opening of a signal filled the space around the goliath's head.

"It appears yet again that my employer underestimates your role in all this." Bane sighed, turning his gun on the boy across the room who stood completely still. Bruce shot off the unconscious pile of men and onto his feet as quickly as he could, but it was still not as fast as Bane had pressed down on that trigger.

/

Clark turned his head to see the enormous, black-clad man standing across the room, firing a gun at him. Clark only watched as a number of bullets came to him in what resembled slow-motion. He had all the time in the world to ponder his action, but he just stared dumbfounded, his body and mind refusing to function.

He finally kicked back into coherence when something gorgeous shot up through the floor in front of him and blocked the bullets.

/

Bane gawked with no end to his bewilderment as he watched a familiar beautiful woman shoot up through the floor and block the series of bullets he had fired with her bracelets, sparks shooting in every which way as she maneuvered herself to redirect the projectiles into harmless directions.

/

Bruce, exploitive man that he was, saw the incredulity in Bane's body language and made an offensive. He grabbed Bane's gun-wielding arm in his own, and threw his legs around the behemoth's neck. He pulled and swung the traditional head-scissors, tossing Bane off balance and flipping him over onto his back without his gun. Weapon now in his hand, Bruce flipped it over so as to hold it by the barrel, and struck Bane harshly across the face as he made his way to his hands and knees. He stayed down.

Bruce then noticed Diana, the princess of parts unknown, standing across the room and turned towards a remarkably still breathing Clark Kent.

/

"Are you okay?" Diana asked, shaking Clark by the shoulder. Clark nodded meekly.

Something grabbed onto her elbow. She turned to see a very intense Bruce Wayne scowling a scowl that seemed remarkably out of place. "You leave him alone." He demanded, and she was already irritated with him.

"Let go of me." She retorted, equally stern as she forcefully tore his hand away from her.

"If you think you and Luthor are going to get away with this, you've got another thing coming." He hissed, again grabbing her and pulling her away towards the security team and handcuffs.

"Hey!" Clark called after him, rounding the table to meet them. "Wayne, it's not what you think!"

She shoved him away as the three of them came to the center the room, and there was something that strangely resembled panic in her eyes when he opened the handcuffs. Clark became a little worried as he felt the equal tension and mutual intolerance resonating off the two.

"Clark, we've got to get you out of here." Diana pleaded with the boy, a desperation in her eye.

"Don't listen to her." Bruce said coldly, eyes locked on the woman, the gears working away in his head. "Forget everything you think you know about her. Her and Luthor are in on this together. This whole raid has just been an attempt on your life."

"That's not true!" She thundered back at Bruce.

"Think about it Clark." Bruce continued, Batman in control since long ago. He ignored the witnesses. They were barely conscious, anyway. This was more important. "That night in the alley: you can't really think that was blind luck that she was there to save you? And tonight. Ask yourself: where were her and Luthor when the attack began? They'd left, Clark. They weren't here."

"Coincidence!" She fired back at the uncovered Batman.

"That's really the best you have?" He shook his head, dissapointed.

Clark couldn't keep up. He was too confused, nothing was making any sense.

"Clark, listen to me!" Diana pleaded, grabbing him by the sleeve. Her eyes were so sincere it made him ache. "I don't want to hurt you..."

"Not yet, anyway." A voice called from behind them. Bruce, Diana, and Clark all shifted their focus to the largest of the double-door entrances, in the middle of which Luthor stood, smiling knowingly with a stray machine-gun in his arms. Bruce tackled Diana to the floor as Luthor opened fire on Clark. There was no one to protect Clark this time.

"No!!!" Diana screamed desperately, elbowing Bruce without holding back and sending him hurtling through the air, across the room and through a table. She looked up in a panic to find the constant barrage of bullets to be ripping Clark's shirt and vest to shreds, sending him stumbling backwards as he unavailingly covered his face with his arms. But the bullets did not break skin. They merely hit him and then fell to the floor, leaving him unscathed and unharmed.

"See?" Lex said to Diana, waving a hand happily to the immune Clark.

Clark and Diana locked eyes for a second that seemed to last forever. Her eyes were wet, having feared him dead, but he only stood there, his garments rags but his skin undaunted. He looked down at her with a strange sort of guilt and fear. He saw the conflict in her eyes, and he knew just by looking at her what she was going to do.

She didn't even have to think about it.


	9. Blue, red, and black

It seemed the usual relatively boring night for Gotham City looking in from the outside. The rich nestled themselves comfortably into their enormous beds, and the poor tried with little success to find a comfortable position within the dumpsters and empty refrigerator boxes. The high-end clubs boomed happily, and the less glamorous streets had some sort of felony at every corner and alley. Pretty standard night, all things considered.

That was of course until Clark Kent found himself rocketing out the wall of the Gotham Ritz before smashing into another one across the street and nearly bringing the entire building down. He didn't even have the time to hurt before Diana sped out the building after him, driving her knee into his face and his head back into the brick of the building before uppercutting him another fifty feet into the night sky. Needless to say, Clark was having a bad night.

She flew up after him as he spun through the air and caught him by the foot, swinging him a full 360 degrees before tossing him back down towards the earth, smashing through a large radio-station antenna before finally skidding across the gravel on the roof of an entirely separate building.

Clark shook the dizziness from his head as he sat up, trying to get himself together before she'd be upon him again. Not quick enough, he got two feet in his face that felt like an anvil dropping on his head. The roof collapsed, and the two landed on the bed of a very frightened couple. Clark rolled off the bed, trying to apologize but Diana tackled him through their wall and back outside before he had the chance.

They ended up coming down upon the top level of a parking garage across the street, and reacting off instinct alone, Clark rolled as he hit the ground, pushing his feet into Diana's abdomen and throwing her off him upside down and nearly through a brick wall.

"Can't we just talk for a second?!" Clark pleaded, gesturing for a time-out, taking deep, gasping breaths as she fell to the concrete, rubble and dust falling down upon her. She was back on her hands and knees in no time, looking like she would have none of it. She grabbed the thing nearest her, which happened to be a Buick, and threw it at him with a loud furious grunt.

Now Clark had never had a Buick thrown at him before, and in all his years had never expected to, so it was understandable that he didn't know the proper etiquette for when the situation seemingly inevitably came up.

It hit him hard and carried him with it off the building, falling down to the streets, shattering the pavement and pinning him beneath it. Drivers beeped their protest loudly, more angry than shocked. Clark almost felt compelled to apologize.

She drove her feet down through the Buick and into him, snapping the car into two clean pieces and shooting a rain of broken glass and debris into the air, which did in fact surprise the cynical Gothamites. She pulled him out from the wreckage with one hand and held him straight at arm's length, winding up her free hand for a good solid straight punch. She struck true, and Clark sped backwards, smashing into a lamp post and bending it pretty-close-to a right angle.

He shook it off as she charged at him, and perhaps finally moved to act, he tore off the longest part of the lamp post and hit what was pretty near a home run into Diana's face. She flew backwards like a pop-fly down centerfield, and Clark suddenly remembered how much he hated baseball.

He took a brief breather, and saluted politely to the gawking pedestrians. "Nice night, huh?" He said awkwardly, noticing a blur in a red gown jetting down the street towards him. He sighed tiredly, and took off, leaving an audible boom echoing in his wake. The last thing he wanted was to fight her, and that left him with few options other than 'run away'.

Well, not run...

/

Bruce Wayne awoke from darkness in what resembled the distant pissed-off cousin of a bad mood. He'd lost control of the situation, which ordinarily was enough to justify a mild irritation, but worst of all, he'd succumbed. To say the Batman was a control freak was perhaps the understatement of the century, and the mere thought of him actually letting himself be caught off guard and fall into unconsciousness was enough to infuriate him. Worst of all, he couldn't remember how it had happened.

He shot up to his feet from the wreckage of a table, ignoring the possible injuries he might have sustained. The occupants of the ballroom had just begun to recover from the shock of the night, getting up off the floor or emerging from their hiding places. Sam and about a dozen others would never rise. He was almost as angry at whoever had stolen control from him as he was at himself.

_You screwed up, Bruce. You screwed up big..._

"Bruce Wayne! Did you see him?! He's a hero!" He heard someone yell.

_Ignorant. Stupid. Sloppy. Lucky that this many survived._

He looked over at the hole in the floor in front of the table and Sam's corpse. He pondered it briefly. Not a bomb or acid, no cinders or burns. Looked like it had just been forced through. No time to take a sample and make sure. People were getting too suspicious.

That was the excuse he told himself. Really, he couldn't stand the look on Sam's dead face peering up at him pleadingly from the floor.

_Your fault. Not good enough. Too slow._

He remembered soon enough in great detail the events leading up to his forced nap. Princess Diana, and that Clark kid... a few dozen crushed bullets littered around the room, a high concentration of them near the windows. Should have been dead, shouldn't have survived. Not even a drop of blood spilt from the boy.

He focused on a brand new hole in the concrete wall across from him. Not there before. Again, no cinders or burns. He looked over his shoulder. Both Bane and Luthor were gone, might have been them.

"Brucey! You're a hero!" The still unnamed brunette ran at him as he marched to the hole in the wall. When she tried to embrace him, he palmed her face and shoved her away onto her rear. He was working.

He looked over through it and into the streets, disconcerted by the chaos and destruction he saw but not showing it. A heavily damaged brick wall across the street, another one a couple buildings down. Further down the street, a car lay overturned in the middle of an intersection, split in two. Not a good night for Gotham.

Blue and red blurs blasted past him, cutting the wind loudly like airplanes flying low through the night sky, whipping up dust and leaving the building rattling in their wake. Whatever glass still remained in the window frames fell and broke on the floor. Despite it all, he had managed to get a look at the pair of lighting bolts thundering through the sky: Clark and Diana. They were flying.

Bruce Wayne pushed all rational objection aside and forced himself to focus on the developing scenario, instead of the sudden shattering of all stable fact and science upon which he functioned. It didn't upset or frighten him in the least. He'd seen things he'd never thought humanity was capable of, and he supposed invulnerability and flight with inexplicable propulsion were simply the next steps. Not for a second did he even consider that perhaps he wasn't capable of handling the situation, or that maybe, just maybe, he was out of his league. No, in Bruce Wayne's mind, this was the exact league in which he belonged.

"Alfred," Bruce began, pulling out a cell-phone and speaking calmly into it. "Bring around the car."

/

Clark rocketed through the streets with a speed that defied reason, and Diana would have been nipping at his coattails had he any. She was fast, almost as fast as him, and with the wind whipping in his face, Clark found himself feeling like a jet pilot as he tried to shake her off of him. He ascended higher into the air, but she followed. He zigzagged, but again she followed . A desperate, not-very-well thought out idea formed in his head.

Clark spun and descended into the traffic, weaving through cars, taxis and trucks at a dizzying rate. Fearing she might lose him, Diana flew in after him, perhaps unwisely. It was like going through a sort of backwards maze at near mach speeds, throwing all caution to the wind as he vainly tried to get lost.

Darting through spaces barely big enough to little success, Clark picked up speed and rose higher into the air, dodging hanging traffic lights, canopies, and lampposts as he flew all over the street and sidewalk, trying to shake her, and still jeting forwards at speeds that a plane would be lucky to keep up with. But there were vehicles on the streets of Gotham far more advanced than planes that night.

As Clark rose above a bridge going over the street, he darted quickly to the side and followed a new street. He turned his head to check if his pursuer remained, and was very frustrated to find that his hunters had doubled. Behind Diana, a sleek black car followed at a speed that equaled their own. It was low to the ground, and stealthy despite being so wide as to barely fit within one lane. It's massive wheels seemingly tore into the ground, tearing up the street, and Clark could have sworn he saw a turbine for an engine. He wondered how it could have possibly been so quiet despite looking like a compressed hybrid of a dragster and a Monster-Truck.

Clark grit his teeth and increased speed.

/

The Batman sat within the cockpit of the Batmobile, flicking switches and pulling back calmly on a clutch, watching with some content as he closed in on the blue and red blurs in front of him. It was almost a miniature, cramped version of the cave's main-console inside the car, a mess of indistinguishable buttons, monitors, and gauges. If the Batmobile were any indication, no matter what nature did, technology and science would forever dominate.

He heard sirens behind him and a warning signal began buzzing within the vehicle, informing him of followers. He tapped at a few keys, one steady hand at the wheel as an image of an indistinguishable number of police cars appeared on a monitor at which would have been in a normal car the rearview mirror. He frowned and shook his head. The cops were always at the wrong place at the wrong time, never there when needed and always a distraction when they weren't.

"Pull over!" The Batman heard Commissioner James Gordon demand through a megaphone in hot pursuit.

"You've gotta be kidding me..." He muttered tapping a key and jamming a frequency. He hit another key, and a signal buzzed. "Gordon, turn your men around and head for the Gotham Ritz." Batman spoke aloud within his car.

From within his squad car, in the passenger seat beside Sgt. Harvey Bullock, Gordon stared wide-eyed at the police radio. "What?" He asked, amazed.

"There was an assassination attempt." The Batman explained, never one to repeat himself. "Turn your men around and go fix that mess. This doesn't concern you"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, ya winged freak?! Pullover now, Bats, or we'll be forced to open fire on you and your pretty little car. Be a shame to wreck that paint job." Bullock barked, snatching away the intercom.

"I don't have time for this." The Batman hissed, still focused on the pair of super-humans ahead. "Just remember you've been warned."

"Same to you." Bullock smiled, setting down the intercom, and putting both hands on the steering wheel. Gordon glared disapprovingly at him.

The Batman hit a few more keys and a circular radar system appeared at the center of the steering wheel, a bat at the center and a blip for every car behind and ahead him. There were close to a dozen of them. Another couple of keys and he had a lock on Clark and Diana, a blue and then a red blip appearing on the radar.

He pushed down on the throttle, accelerating as he wove through slow, oblivious cars, consciously keeping enough distance so as to handle any sudden turns or movement but still close enough to keep an eye on them if they were to make use of any abrupt burst of speed or if the cops were to close in on him.

Which they most certainly did. Two squad cars slid in on either side of him, cornering him between them and trying to steer him off road. He twisted and turned the steering wheel, trying to maneuver his way out of it with little success.

"Fine." He muttered to no one in particular. "We'll play."

He pressed down on a key and two thick blades shot out from beneath the car. He kicked down on the throttle and shot himself forward, ripping apart the front wheels of the cars on either side of him. They spun in and crashed into each other. The drivers were fine, if not a little shaken.

"Son of a..." Muttered Bullock, swerving out of the way of the two vehicles along with the remaining squad cars ahead. Gordon just held on for dear life.

The Batman watched his prey carefully, hand hovering over a switch as digital cross hairs danced along the windshield, trying to get a lock. A squad car rammed him form behind, and he jerked forward in his seat. The car rammed him again as he tried to refocus. Once more, and the Batman had had enough. He pulled back on a lever at his side, and the flames trickling out from the back of his engine erupted in mass of fire that consumed the squad car and blinded the driver. It swerved into the side walk and crashed into a lamppost as the Batmobile rocketed forwards with a vicious burst of speed, leaving a thick, blinding screen of smoke behind it that sent several other cars off road and into barriers or walls..

"This is Commissioner James Gordon reporting a high speed chase down 3rd street. Suspect is driving a black...uhhh...car?" Grodon shook his head uncertainly and merely shrugged when Bullock gave him a sideways glance. "Anyway, were going to need backup. A LOT of backup."

"Could you be a little more specific with the description, please?" An official sounding voice buzzed in.

"Sorry, but not really." Gordon answered apologetically. "Trust me, if they see it, they'll know it."

Gordon could picture the voice shrugging in acceptance as it sighed.

The Batman guided the beastly vehicle smoothly, slipping it through traffic seamlessly, keeping the police at bay if only briefly. As his prey crossed an intersection, he flipped a switch and the traffic lights abruptly switched, leaving a wall of speeding cars behind him. Two of the back-most cars skidded to a stop while the remaining squad cars continued after the Batmobile.

The Batman bit down on his lip and shook his head in a mild frustration as he observed the string of policemen still tailing him. As Clark and Diana made an abrupt ninety degree turn, the Batman flicked a switch and slammed his fist into a big red button. A panel opened in the side of the Batmobile, a grappling hook firing out, latching onto a lamppost and sending the car swerving into on-coming traffic, leaving a trail of minuscule, spiky orbs in its wake. The Batman pulled harshly on the steering wheel and forced the car back into the proper lane, barely dodging a transport truck which swerved and nearly overturned. The truck skidded uncontrollably into traffic as the small orbs exploded, shooting tiny spikes in every direction and taking out just about every tire for a hundred meters. Cars swerved and crashed hopelessly.

Bullock swore and hit the steering wheel, staring at the mass car wreck ahead of him. Frowning and munching on his lower lip, he switched gear into reverse and glanced over his shoulder, turning into the nearest side street.

"We have lost visual contact. Repeat, we have lost visual." Gordon yelled into the radio. "Suspect is presumably heading down Kane Memorial Street. Send all available squad cars and try to cut him off at the overpass."

The street virtually empty ahead of him, the Batman kicked his vehicle into a new gear, its massive motor finally audibly humming as he closed in on his airborne prey. They came to a long bridge that went over the highway, cars speeding by below them. At the other end, motoring down towards them, was a wave of squad cars, closing in. Panicking, Clark suddenly turned and darted down towards the highway below, Diana nipping at his heels. It would not be so easy for the Batman.

He switched gears furiously and pulled harshly on the steering wheel, the back end of the car sliding around until the front faced the barrier. He kicked down on the throttle and pulled back on a lever. Small jets licked out from beneath the Batmobile as the main engine burst forward, and the massive vehicle jetted into the air, propelling itself up and over the concrete barrier and down to the distant highway. The squad cars skidded to a stop, and the policemen opened their doors to stare dumfounded at the remarkable vehicle rocketing along, against oncoming highway traffic, no less.

The Batman maneuvered feverishly as the speeding cars rushed towards him. He slipped and slid the Batmobile through the tiniest gaps. The frightened, erratic attempts to swerve out of the way by the other drivers didn't simplify it in the least. He quickly curved onto the emergency lane and continued his pursuit from there.

Sirens rung loudly somewhere near him, and from the corner of his eye, the Batman noticed Sgt Harvey Bullock and Commissioner James Gordon speeding along beside him, on the other end of the barrier and in the opposite emergency lane.

"Pull over now!" Gordon demanded through a megaphone.

The Batman frowned and kept his eyes on the two super-humans flying ahead of him. He couldn't help but wonder why the good, dedicated cops only showed up when they were a liability.

"Take the wheel!" Bullock shouted to Gordon, and they managed to switch places despite the awkwardness of it. Bullock aimed and opened fire with his pistol as he leant out through the outside window, firing over the squad car and at the Batmobile. The bullets merely bounced off with a loud, high-pitched and mildly distracting noise.

The Batman took a moment to plot a course of action, taking everything into account. The streets were far too busy and allowed hardly any room to move, but he simply would not premit himself to fall behind his prey. An exit lead to an overpass ahead of him, and he could see a pair of elevated subway tracks stretching out beneath it. When Clark suddenly jerked sideways and into the tunnel the tracks lead to, the Batman needn't think of it for another second. He swerved sideways, through the oncoming traffic and onto the exit ramp, Gordon skidding to a stop and nearly sending Bullock tumbling out the window. He stared with something in between chagrin and bafflement as the Batmobile once more shot itself over the bridge's railing and landed on one of the elevated train tressles, bouncing around as the Batman tried to regain control.

Clark looked behind him through the darkness of the tunnel and was amazed to see that the beastly black car was still trailing him, the light from the back of the tunnel gleaming off it menacingly. Diana, curiously enough, was gone. As Clark turned to once more face forward, he found a train speeding towards him, its headlights illuminating the near pitch black tunnel. Clark was definitely not having a good night.

He nearly screamed as he spun and darted onto the adjacent track. It was a far more complex affair for the Batmobile: jets emerged from panels, two from each side. They whirred mechanically, the inside jets pointing their heads downwards while the outside's pointed upwards. The two jets at the far end of the car exploded in a fiery blast, kicking one side into the air just as the other's jets kicked in. The car flipped into the air and literally barrel-rolled over the barrier, between concrete columns and onto the adjacent track, a whisker ahead of a second train that now followed the two, often bumping into the rear end of the Batmobile.

Clark, naive enough to think he was through the worst of it, was caught off guard as the roof above him collapsed, barely missing him. Diana stood up from the rubble, an irate scowl on her face as she made herself known as the cause of the crash. She took off after Clark, leaving the Batman to handle damage control.

The Batman kicked down on the throttle, and burst ahead of the train cart, tapping madly at keys on his console and targeting the mass of solid rubble with a cross-hair on his windshield. A small missile shot out from the front end of the Batmobile, exploding the pile as the Batmobile again barrel-rolled. It sailed over the barrier and onto the previous track as the explosion displaced the potentially damaging debris. The train sailed through it fairly unshaken, and the Batman let out the tiniest sigh of relief, still focused forward.

Clark darted sideways and into a subway station, flying up the stairs and back onto street level, Diana not far behind. The Batman swore quietly, unable to follow, but pressed onward none the less, waiting for the tracks to lead him back into open air.

Clark sailed into the night sky for a moment before hurtling back down over the tunnel and onto a lower, busier street, and he noticed the Batmobile emerge on the elevated train track, motoring along at a pace equal to that of the two super-humans. It noticeably kicked into a new gear as it soared off the track and came down to the same street as the two, firing out a huge net that cast a shadow over them briefly before they sped out from under it and darted into a narrow side street with parked cars running forever into the horizon on either side. The Batmobile skidded and followed down the thinning corridor.

At this point, it was just a test of speed. The Batman grit his teeth and accelerated consistently, the flames of his engine whipping out behind the vehicle like a massive cape of dancing, orange embers, nitro burning away as he shattered the sound barrier. He was the last of the three to do it.

Yet still it seemed not enough as Clark gained more and more distance as the three sped down along the street. None would give up though, and the speed of the three continued to increase at alarming rates.

Finally, everything seemed to fall dead silent and time stood still, the roar of the engines, the whipping of the air, all quieted. There was what looked like an imploding electrical storm as Clark rocketed miles forward and out of sight in a sudden explosion of nothing, a massive tidal shockwave ripping apart the ground, demolishing the glass of the buildings, cracking brick and throwing cars into the air in its wake.

The immense blast of air hit Diana and the Batmobile unlike anything either had ever experienced. Diana was sent hurtling backwards from it as the Batmobile swerved inwards. She hit the black car like a missile, and it rolled along with the forceful vibration like a ball almost the whole length of the street, the Batman pulling harshly on the steering wheel.

Eventually, the car stopped rolling, thankfully landing in its upright position, but a mess none the less. The top of the vehicle slid open noisily, and the Batman emerged from it, analyzing the machinery. It was heavily damaged, sparks flying and pieces of its armor torn to shreds. The fact that Diana was deeply embedded into the side of the car did it no favors, either. The dent she left resembled something like a canon ball hitting a steel wall at point blank. She was unconscious.

He turned his attention down the street, little bolts of electricity still crackling in the wake of Clark Kent. The world was suddenly a whole lot more complicated.


	10. Wants and Needs

ana awoke to a blinding white, blinking tiredly while she tried to shake away the haze and stiffness running through all her body. She was too sore and tired to look objectively at all the facts and realize how much trouble she was in.

She tried to stand to her feet, but her legs were numb. She felt weaker than she had in all her life, emptied of all that made her live and breath. She felt cold iron against her forearms, and turned her head to find she was chained to a wall, her bracelets taken. She pulled as hard as she could, but the heavy chains surrendered little more than a couple feet of give, and she collapsed backwards against the wall exhausted.

She felt unsettled, the padded white walls seemingly closing on her as she struggled vainly with the cuffs, her breaths quick and short. She looked around herself anxiously. A lone camera rested in a high corner of the room, focused unflinchingly on her.

Diana watched the camera as intently and unfaltering as it watched her. She sat in the corner opposite to it, trembling slightly, but a strength and anger maintained in her eyes.

A door she did not know was there opened from the wall, and an old, meek looking man strolled in, pushing a cart in front of him. He lifted a tray from it and set it on the ground in front of her, paying her no real attention as he went on about his task disinterestedly.

"Who are you?" Diana asked, her voice harsh and demanding

The old man looked at her for a moment, raising an eyebrow at her. He continued about his business silently.

"Who are you?" She repeated, even more sternly.

"You needn't know." The old man told her softly, smiling slightly but warmly. "I'm of no importance."

"Why am I here?" She demanded, maneuvering herself off the wall and onto her knees. "Why am I bound? Why are you keeping me?"

"That's not for me to say." The old man said, shaking his head and subtly avoiding looking at her directly. "I suggest you play nice, though. It'll make the whole thing easier for all of us."

"And if I refuse?" She said indignantly.

"Trust me, none of us want that." the old man said with warning but no personal menace. "My master has methods of extracting information that I myself have not been able to watch without nausea in a long time."

"Your master?" She contemplated.

"There. I've already gone and said too much." He muttered, scolding himself. "Regardless, I do not want to see these methods in practice on you, so I advise you to take heed: If you try to be strong, it will only take longer, and the end will remain the same. I've seen it too many times..." He went grim and sad for a moment, mildly disgusted.

"Well," He began anew, burying his melancholy and putting on a smile. Diana couldn't help but notice how weary he looked. "There's food on the tray, though I don't know how he expects you to eat all tied up like that. I suggest you get ayfully handy awfully quickly with those feet."

She said nothing while he opened the door and exited the room, which he was thankful for. He walked the long, rocky trail slowly and silently, eyes focused on the black ground beneath him. He looked up and found his master, Bruce Wayne, working away in the lab.

Alfred Pennyworth stepped slowly as he came to the security console, looking up tiredly at the feed of the girl under watch.

"Is this really necessary, sir?" Alfred asked softly, looking at the glowing green monitor and knowing full well the answer. "Look at her; she's petrified. The poor girl."

"It's not human, Alfred." Bruce said plainly, sounding remarkably detached as he analyzed Diana's seemingly regular bracelets.

"Looks and acts more human than you sir, if I do say so myself." Alfred muttered, his heart aching for the girl on the green screen, which barely drew a glance from Bruce. "And don't refer to her like that. 'It'." He shook his head in disgust "Look at her! She's a person, not some specimen for you to sit back and study objectively. The least you could do is indulge us with a 'she' or a 'her'."

"Don't get too attached." Bruce said quietly and patiently, busying himself with a glove and sharp, jagged shards he had chipped away from the green rock he'd found the other night. "She flew, Alfred. Not only that, but her and that Kent nearly wrecked a whole city block. She's hardly a girl. You know what she can do"

The butler remained quiet for a moment, contemplating the 'it'. "I'm not so sure..."

"Don't believe me?" Bruce raised a surprised eyebrow from his work at his butler, a rare occasion, putting away the shards and material he'd been working on.

"It's not that, sir." Alfred shook his head. "It's just that if she truly can do the things you say she can, why isn't she doing them? It's not like some chains and a little room like that could contain something on the scale of what you're describing."

Bruce didn't answer, conveniently enthralled in a blood sample of Clark Kent.

"Look at this." Bruce finally said, spying through a microscope while blindly yet expertly tapping away at a keyboard. An enlarged image of the blood and tissue sample appeared. "Notice anything unusual?"

"Aside from everything?" Alfred inquired, amazed.

"This is a sample I extracted and isolated from the green rock." Bruce elaborated, tapping at a few keys. "Compare it to before." Bruce continued, and the screen split into two images of the blood and tissue at different intervals.

"Good lord..." Alfred gasped at the two radically different cells.

"Full recovery." Bruce nodded his head, then shrugged. "As far as I know. He's clearly not human. Things I've never seen in any man started popping up once it was out of range of radiation. He's more plant-like really, living off of stored sunlight that's consumed and used with striking fluency."

"How is that possible?" Alfred interjected, perplexed at how easily his master handled this scientific anomaly.

"No hypothesis or conclusion thus far." He stated, chillingly mechanical as he tapped at several more keys. "But look what happens when it is introduced to new sunlight."

Alfred's eyes nearly shot out from his head at the third image that appeared. It was an unwatchable, bustling and glowing metropolis of molecular activity, each cell working in a blur that literally could not be followed.

"It's kind of like an evolved cousin of photosynthesis:" Bruce explained tiredly, neither pride or surprise registering on his face. "Solar energy is absorbed and converted with 100% efficiency to chemical energy where it remains, as opposed to being converted to CO2 like most plants go about it. The energy is instead somehow expanded upon and used with an incalculable potency, running easily within thousands of times that of any earthly human, animal, or plant. Cells and tissue become virtually indestructible, and could live for decades off a single beam of light. This kid's metabolism is the equivalent of powering an entire city for all time off a single leaf. Forget nuclear or fusion, this is lightyears away from anything we've even come close to."

"So... what do you make of him?" Alfred asked, not as keen a mind as the boy he'd had a hand in raising.

"He's strong. REALLY strong, and just about invulnerable to boot. Known diseases and viruses wouldn't stand a chance against his immune system. We're dealing with something beyond anything ever seen in any previous scientific work, but I could have told you that an hour ago." Bruce whispered thoughtfully, still focused on the head screen. "He barely resembles humanity. Too far away from it to be a mutant. He's... new."

"So what does it all mean?" Alfred inquired. "What does that make him?"

For a moment, Bruce Wayne was dead silent, staring intensely at the screen "Just another specimen..." He whispered thoughtfully, more to himself than his butler.

/

When Clark Kent finally opened his eyes a couple moments after pressing his speed harder than ever before, he found himself standing in the middle of a corn field, the Gotham Skyline a vague silhouette in the distance behind him. He frowned. He had done it again.

Finally, the gravity of his situation finally caught up with him, not having been able to keep up with the pace he had previously kept. He swallowed hard, taking quick, tired breaths. It had been a long time since he had done anything like that. He looked up at the night sky, and decided it wasn't exhaustion that was suffocating him.

Where could he go, now that so many knew, and so many wanted him? He could never stop running now, there could be no rest. He'd be an outsider forever.

He rubbed his jaw sorely. Apparently, Diana could hit pretty hard when she wanted to. Harder than anything he'd ever felt, in fact. She'd gone at him with a rage and determination that worried him far more than Luthor, or even the Bat for that matter. If tonight were any indication she'd chase him until the ends of the earth and then beyond the horizon, and kill him if he ever let up.

Clark felt a pang in his heart and a weight on his shoulders. It was not his jaw which hurt him.

/

Diana figured it had been barely an hour when the old man returned, wheeling in a television and a stack of video tapes about as high as her leg.

"Hello again," The old man greeted amicably, plugging in the television.

"What are those?" She asked, nodding her head to the tapes.

"These? These are some old films." The old man explained, grabbing two. "Thought you could use some entertainment. From my master's old tape collection. Mostly westerns, there was little else he watched as a boy. Hasn't touched them in years, though."

The old man looked over to the full tray in the corner and frowned. "You haven't even touched you dinner..."

"Kind of hard to..." She managed to shrug against the heavy chains.

"Of course, of course." He nodded emphatically, lifting the tray and carrying it closer to her. He dipped a spoon into a bowl, and lifted it to her mouth. "Say 'aww'."

Diana would have been offended if not for the disarming, benign smile on the man's face.

"Trust me." He winked. "You'll like it."

She looked at the broth warily. She knew not what it was to be 'fatherly', but something told her this man exemplified the very best aspects of it. She opened her mouth obligingly.

"There's a good girl." He nodded happily. "Tasty, no?"

She nodded only slightly, swallowing and building up some courage as he again dunked the spoon. "Your master..." She began, carefully. "You are slave to the Batman, aren't you?"

"Aren't you a clever one?" He paused, then beamed, practically proud. "Though I'd hardly call myself a slave."

"But you call him master." She said, somewhere between a statement and a question.

He paused, musing thoughtfully for a moment. "Touché." He admitted, bobbing his head slightly. "The difference though is I am willing."

"Willing?" She curved an eyebrow at him, and opened her mouth again.

"Will and choice are very important things down here." He shrugged, dunking the spoon and serving her another sip. "I could leave if I chose to."

"You don't really believe that." She told him knowingly.

He paused, looking at her, then frowned. "I wouldn't know." He finally shrugged. "It's irrelevant. I've never wanted to leave."

"Why not?" She asked curiously, incapable of grasping how someone could will upon themselves a life of humility.

"I'm needed." He told her simply.

"So you have responsibility?" She pried.

"It's a fair bit more complicated than that." He said, shaking his head. "But yes, essentially. I believe that if I were to leave, things would happen that, simply put, I don't want to happen."

"To the Batman?" She inquired, analyzing her enemy.

"I think so," He shrugged. "But maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. Maybe I have delusions of grandeur."

"Because you care for him." She said, suddenly able to draw parallels between her own mother and this old man.

"Yes." He nodded patiently. "And I would hope him for me."

"He needs you." She told him comfortingly without anyway of knowing. "He wants you to stay."

"Two very different things." he smiled, looking very weary. "At best, one of which is true."

"What do you mean?" She inquired.

"'Wants' and 'needs' are two very different things, at least in this house." He told her patronizingly. She would have been insulted if he weren't so gracious about it. "The Batman, as you call him, has given up on 'wants' a long time ago. Things like personal indulgence, desire, emotion, and gratification have become somewhat impertinent to him. He lives a life of only necessity now. There is nothing he wants. There are only 'needs'."

"Such as?" She pressed quietly.

"It's difficult to define sometimes." Alfred pondered. "Things I used to think a man could not live without, he's pressed right on through in spite. It's hard to know what a person really 'needs' living with someone like him. I would say that he needs to follow the path he's on, that he needs to do the things he's doing, but 'needs' is a tricky word. There is a school of thought that says there are no 'needs', that the spirit is capable of anything as long as the will is strong enough, and that our weaknesses only exist because we allow them to. The Batman would be the case and point of it, whether he knows it or not. I often catch myself thinking that if it were up to him, he wouldn't sleep, eat, or even let me tend to his wounds. And he'd be fine, too, or at least as close to fine as he gets. He obliges me if there's time, because even if he knows it isn't 'necessary', he acknowledges its benefits."

"I don't understand." She shook her head.

"I don't either, to be perfectly honest."Alfred shrugged, then smiled. "You can imagine then, how hard it is explain. He's stronger than I know, and his will is indomitable. He has a mind beyond anything I've ever seen or even read about, and there's an endless depth to it. I liken it to a very small, tight tunnel with a light at the end. The light is his mission, his goal, and there is very little that can get through that tunnel to him. All those little inefficiencies like pain, fear, and the rules that hold most of society back are completely inconsequential to him. There are only his own rules, the light, and the path he needs to get to it. I honestly fancy sometimes that he could walk with two broken legs."

"It makes no sense." She sighed. "Just because you don't believe in boundaries doesn't make them go away. He can't beat them forever."

"True enough." He shrugged absently. "Honestly, I don't know full well how he's lasted this long, but then again, I'm just the butler. He's the strongest man I'll ever know, and there's nothing I can imagine that would ever break him. He'll never stop fighting, and nothing could make him. Judgement day will come and pass before he's finished.

"There." He said proudly, slowly standing up off his knees, age apparent, empty bowl in his hand. "All finished. You've got a healthy appetite if I do say so myself, madam."

"You're leaving?" She shot to her knees, painfully childish as she stared up at him, not wanting to be alone in this strange place.

"I have work to do, miss." The old man said, half apologetically and half reassuringly. "But don't fret. Here, I'll put on a film for you." He looked through the dusty tape collection thoughtfully. "Ah! 'No More Sunsets'. Always liked that one. Very cathartic, and a bit of a tragedy. American movie-making to the bone. I think you'll appreciate it."

He inserted the tape, turned on the television, and pressed play. "Enjoy." He told her with a bow, exiting the room and leaving her in silence and solitude to watch a man on a horse moving slowly towards the screen, sun rising behind him.

Alfred shut the door behind him, pausing in serenity for a moment. Then a strange image across the cave took all that away and forced concern into him.

At the other end of the darkness, sat Bruce Wayne, turned away from his console, leaning forward in his chair and clutching his head in his hands, the immense screen behind him offering the only light, showing a healthy human cell. Something about him was askew. He seemed troubled, tired. It was true that the man hadn't slept in days, but that had become common practice, and never before had Alfred seen him allow himself to look as exhausted as he did right then. It was a rare sight for the Batman to look as weak and naked as he did there.

"Sir?" Alfred began quietly, carefully approaching his master and son.

"It doesn't make any sense!" Bruce shouted, no end to his frustration as he shot up from his chair. Alfred retreated a step, caught off guard by his master's uncharacteristic apprehension.

"Sir, what's wrong?" Alfred pressed gently, his hand on the man's shoulder.

"X-rays, blood samples, body tissue, DNA, all of it!" Bruce said distractedly, pacing around in front of the massive computer, staring down into nothing. "There's nothing there! Nothing to explain the things she can do, nothing that's even out of the norm! She's human!"

"Sir," Alfred said, like a father trying to ease a child in tantrum. "I don't see..."

"There's something I'm missing..." he reasoned, furious. "Something that I'm not seeing! She can't be human... she can't! There has to be something... something that makes her different... Something I can understand! Something to explain..."

"Sir..." He rested a comforting hand on the man's shoulder.

"She flew, Alfred!" Bruce yelled, smacking away the butler's arm harshly. "Don't you get it?! She flew..."

Bruce stared at him, trembling slightly, clearly shaken. Alfred could say nothing, dumfounded. Bruce turned away, scowling that infamous scowl.

"It's not possible, Alfred." he said quietly, some semblance of calm restored. "It goes against the grain: physics, biology, every science I've ever known. There's no flight without wings, no propulsion without force. A person can't just jump into the air and then not come back down. But she can, and so can he." He pointed at a large image of Clark Kent on a secondary monitor, a list of articles and statistics accompanying it. "If these are higher forces... if this is really the impossible I'm dealing with... If fact and science no longer apply..." He began waery, his edge wearing thin as he touched the screen. It scrolled down through endless headlines and titles. "Then what's left? What do I have?"

Part of Alfred hoped it was rhetorical, as there were no words to help the man. Bruce Wayne didn't falter, moving on to an article projected on the monitor which featured a photo of an utterly incinerated diner and a headline that read '13 DEAD IN UNEXPLAINED FIRE'.

It amazed Alfred everytime. No matter how demoralized, no matter how daunted, the man somehow always kept on working. The way he could bury every issue and distraction to focus on any number of tasks was simply astounding. It seemed that never in all his life had he received answers just by asking. He had to get them for himself, and as disheartening and futile as it so often seemed, he kept on plugging away vainly. To say the Batman was pessimistic would not only be a misinterpretation, but inaccurate. It was an eternal optimism that drove him, and a hope that perhaps he'd make a difference in the end, recognized or not. It was the quality Alfred admired most in him.

"You know that Clark Kent kid I was telling you about earlier?" Bruce called back over his shoulder to his butler, who turned to face him and the monitor. "He's responsible for the deaths of thirteen people."


	11. Storm Clouds

An elevator door slid open and Lex Luthor emerged into a narrow hallway, Bane and Lady Shiva close behind him. He walked with his hands in his pockets, purpose and precision in every step and a satisfied grin on his normally intense face.

He finally came to an enormous, round laboratory, light bouncing a bright white off the flawless steel. A striking, bulbous contraption attached securely to the ceiling hung high above a retractable metallic floor. A meek, disheveled middle-aged man in a shabby lab coat stood atop an elevated walkway that rose up from the floor and around the contraption, like a ring about to envelope a finger.

"How's it going, Teng?" Luthor called to the absent-minded man.

The man shot himself off the wall and peered over the railing, smiling emphatically. "Very well, Mr Luthor. Wonderful, in fact." he said quickly, just short of groveling, adjusting the glasses at the tip of his nose. "Terrific, even! Splendid!"

"Okay, okay." Luthor calmed him with a simple raise of his hand. "Glad to hear it. Tell me, will we be ready to move forward tonight?"

"Tonight, sir?" Teng's enthusiasm quickly faded. "But we're not scheduled to begin for another couple weeks."

"Something came up." Luthor told him coldly. "Now answer the question: Will we be ready, or not?"

"I-I suppose..." Teng gulped and nodded his head, knowing full well the consequences that came along with denying the will of Lex Luthor.

"Good." Luthor's smile returned. "Start the preparations. The specimen should be here by the end of the night."

With a wave of his hand to his two body guards, the three disappeared into another corridor, leaving Dr Teng a frantic mess.

"You seem awfully confident for a man in your state." Bane muttered, short slow strides keeping him at the same pace as the smaller rogues. "You have lost your contact with the girl. The boy is missing. How, pretell, do you expect to find him?"

"Oh, I don't expect to find him myself." Luthor said happily, turning to the mammoth. "I'll leave that to the princess."

"Need I remind you she too is lost?" Bane interjected, tilting his head.

"I'd hardly say she's lost, m'boy." Luthor smiled, extracting a small remote from his pocket, pointing it over his shoulder and pressing a button. A metallic door slid open and revealed what was for all intents and purposes a war room. Maps and consoles littered the room, and a lone twinkling red light flashed and beeped, honed in on an area just outside of Gotham. "After all, I know exactly where she is."

/

Diana sat in her fluorescent white prison all on her own, staring longingly at the plate of food, oblivious to the microscopic tracking device sewn into her gown as an old western played in the background. It was the strangest tale, starring a gruff, hard-talking, seemingly invincible vigilante who rebelled against a corrupt government, supported only by a kind-hearted sheriff. Pure fantasy.

No longer interested in the film, she turned her focus back to the food, frowning thoughtfully. She shifted herself, positioning her foot and maneuvering her toes around a fork. With some difficulty, she stabbed a piece of meat, and managed to lift it shakily towards her mouth and nearer her hand. Inches away, the fork fell from her toes. She sighed tiredly.

All at once, the humming of the fluorescent bulbs disappeared and the white room turned to black, the glow of the television set the only light left. The harsh, gravelly voice of the vigilante was all that pierced the silence.

"You'd really like me to be afraid, wouldn't you?" Diana spoke angrily into the darkness, past the television, which incidently was all that answered her. "Are you so insecure? This whole game of shadows only makes you seem cowardly, you know. The darkness will never frighten me, no matter how much you want it too. Show yourself, if you call yourself a hero. The brave have no need for fear."

Again, there was only the television set for a long while, offering the only semblance of illumination. A quiet minute of darkness, and the fluorescent lights kicked back into life, humming loudly, and there was the Batman, standing statuesque at the center of the room in all his black glory, the television pushed to the side of the room. Silence was his slave.

"There." She frowned, and maneuvered herself onto her knees. "Now, as Princess of Themyscira, I demand my immediate release."

The Batman sneered. It was a vile, contemptuous thing. "You're not serious." He said, and she sunk into the wall, scowling furiously at him.

"Listen, boy." she hissed hatefully. "There are things at work here that you can't even begin to comprehend."

"You think so?" He asked, narrowing his eyes to barely slits. "Try me."

"You insolent man!" She shouted. "Let me go or by Harah I shall..."

The Batman extracted a small remote with a single button on it. He pressed down on it, and an electrical surge shot from the wall, through her chains and throughout her body. She screamed in agony, and he didn't even flinch as he held down the button. When he finally let go, she jumped forward at him ferociously, her chains keeping her mere inches out of reach. He somewhat gently push-kicked her back down against the wall and to the floor.

"Thought you were stronger than that..." He muttered, detached as she glared at him hatefully. He ignored the heaving of her chest as she breathed heavily. "Since we're on the subject of comprehension, let's take a look at the scenario, shall we?" He almost sighed, slowly turning away from her and taking a seat on the floor against the opposite wall. "Things happened tonight. Things that go against science; things that have no right to happen. You were one of those things. You have answers, and not only do I have questions, but despite your stubborn denial, I also have the power. So before you open your mouth to spit or shout at me again, I'd like you to remember how cold that iron is against your wrists, and how hot those volts were coursing through you."

"I'll break your every bone..." She hissed venomously, shaking her head.

"I'll melt the flesh off your fragile frame." He said plainly, impossibly casual. "I'll peel away every layer of skin and pour salt in the wounds. I'll tear out your teeth and make you listen to them rattle. I'll dissect your brain and leave you just close enough to a vegetable so as you can still feel it when I hurt you. I'll tear away at every fabric of your being and make you scream for death." He paused, and shrugged. "If you just want to waste time exchanging empty threats, I can tell you right now you're not going to win me over.

"Now," He began anew, watching her seething furiously. "First and foremost, I'd like to know what you are."

"I'll tell you nothing..."

Without even a moment's reluctance, he pressed down on the button once more. She again screamed in anguish, and her electrical flickering lit up his face.

"Let's take another shot at it, shall we?" He nodded his head patiently as she struggled vainly with the chains, malicious to her core. "Try to watch your tongue this time."

His thumb hovered over the button ominously, and she conceded begrudgingly. "I am Princess Diana of Themyscira." She muttered through grit teeth.

"Greek." He noted, thumb resting warily atop the button. "Destroyed around the turn of the new age. City hasn't existed for centuries."

"That's sort of the idea."

Hesitantly, he lifted his thumb away from the button.

"Themyscira is home to my people: the Amazons. It is found on an island that has remained hidden for the past two thousand years." She told him.

"How's that?"

"It's invisible to the eye of man." She explained resentfully. "It's to keep you from storming in and ruining it."

"Makes sense." He muttered thoughtfully, strangely at ease. "It's happened before."

"You're telling me." She hissed, and he just stared at her. "Ages ago, we lived amongst you. We were a race chosen by the Goddesses; Muses given power from Gaea to incite the virtues of equality and coexistence. The earth mother." She explained bitingly.

"I know my mythology." He retorted, on the defensive.

"Do not dismiss the sufferings of my people as 'myth'." She hissed. "Blood was shed trying to aid you and your kind. You would have none of it, though. We were rejected and harassed by the very people we were meant to inspire. So we withdrew into our city, ignoring our mission and purpose just as you had."

The Batman simply sat there unshaken, impervious to the venom in her words and doing his best to keep an open mind, instincts screaming against him.

"It was not long after that Heracles, son of Zeus and he himself a demigod, stormed the gates along with his men, sent by King Eurystheus to steal the girdle of the Amazon queen."

"Ares' belt." The Batman added, and Diana was genuinely surprised. "Told you I knew my mythology."

"In this case, you'd be right." Diana conceded. "You choose to celebrate Heracles the hero, ignoring his errors and indiscretions. Heracles attacked Queen Hyppolyta and not even he could match her warrior skills and spirit. But she found compassion whereas they had had none. Instead of killing the beast, she showed mercy, and invited him and his soldiers into our city."

"There was a war." The Batman elaborated. "Heracles won the belt and returned to Eurystheus. It was his ninth labor."

"It was not a war." She shook her head defiantly. "It was a betrayal, a slaughter. We were put into bondage, our power and grace stolen from us. Themsyscira was burned to the ground only to quench Heracles' madness. My sisters yearned for vengeance, and under Antiope, they found it. Hyppolyta however refused more bloodlust, and for that, the Gods rewarded her."

"Heracles killed Hyppolyte." The Batman interjected, standing to his feet and shaking his head.

"Do not dishonor her." Diana hissed angrily. "Hyppolyta, not your 'Hyppolyte', did not fall. She merely disappeared, and your biased recorders merely filled in the details. The Goddesses enforced a penance upon us for forgetting our purpose and allowing ourselves to fall victim to man, conferring upon us the post of wardens for an unspeakable evil beneath an island. We were given immortality, and our souls were cleansed, under the condition that we would never repeat our mistakes. Lord Poseidon parted the sea, and for three long months we followed the salty path until we finally came to our new home. Under Hyppolyta's guidance, our best artisans and builders erected a great city-state. We would call it Themsyscira, after the burned remains of our former stronghold. We guarded the evils beneath the island with much care, finding joy in our new lives and mission."

"But something got out..." The Batman deduced, leaning against the wall.

"Our defenses were thought impermeable." Diana explained. "It was not until recently that we realized something was missing. A spirit, a spectre of Ares himself had escaped. We believe he has taken a new life in the form of a man."

"...And you think it's Clark." The Batman concluded, pacing the room.

"Not you, nor even he, could possibly understand what he is capable of." Diana pressed. "He has power unlike your world has ever seen. With the forces he wields, both our lands would be his for the taking. You must understand that I have been charged with the responsibility for his destruction. It is my intention to defeat him, and return him to the Underworld where he belongs. If you do not release me, you seal the fate of both our peoples."

The Batman stood more still than Diana had thought any living thing was capable of, contemplative and, Diana finally noticed, skewing a shot of his face. It occurred to her then after all this time she'd spent with him, she was still at a loss as to what he looked like. The Western still raced along quietly on the television, the vigilante now facing down his antagonist.

"No." He decided simply, folding his arms and shaking his head.

"What?" Diana barely uttered, flabbergasted.

"I'm not going to let you go." He explained. "I don't have reason enough to put any amount of trust in you."

"Then you condemn your people to the fire!" She hollered furiously, shooting up from the floor and straining against her chains.

"Don't worry your pretty little head." He muttered, staring condescendingly at her. "I'll handle Clark."

"From where do you pull such arrogance?!" She spat spitefully. "He is a god, beyond anything your kind has ever faced! You are only a man, and he will treat you as such! What could you possibly expect to do?"

"And you?" He raised his voice only slightly, taunting her as he moved to within inches of her reach. "How do you expect to beat him? Pound him into the ground and hope for the best? You think you can outpower him, despite everything you just told me? You've already fallen to him once, and he wasn't even trying. You expect me to entrust you with _my_ city, when as far as I know you'd willingly sacrifice my people to the cause? I'm smarter than that, and I had confidence in you enough to think you'd have figured that out by now. So tell me princess, what's _your_ master plan? I'll bet anything it's no better than mine."

She shook her head, quaking with fury. "You are _just_ a man." She muttered quietly, hatefully. "There is absolutely nothing you can do to him."

"You think so?" He asked, less than an inch from her face. "Well then you're not thinking. Here I have you beaten. I could kill you on a whim, and you say you're stronger than him. So, if you're still wondering what it is I'm going to do, it's the same thing mankind has done to every other species that has dared set foot on this earth, above or below us." He turned away from her, and opened the invisible door on the wall.

"I'm going to put the fear of man in him." He added, shutting the door behind him.

On the television, the antagonist fell to the sandy ground, beaten.

--------------------

Clark walked briskly through a poorly maintained corridor of a cheap apartment building, breathing through his nose as he juggled through assorted junk on a small metal ring, hunting a particular key. He was a mess, wearing a heavy wet rain coat, and shouldering an equally heavy brown bag. If he looked like a drifter, it was probably because he was.

Clark, feverish, quick thoughts spreading rapidly through his head, had formed some semblance of a plan. He'd gather his things, and move onto a new city. He'd done it once before when things had gotten rough, he could do it again. He figured Metropolis was a nice, big place to hide. It'd be hard for anyone to find him there. Still, changing his name would probably be a good idea.

He jiggled a key in the lock of his apartment. Clark swung the door open, and stepped into his barely furnished home, moving quickly through the darkness and gathering whatever was necessary. Everything would be fine. He'd move faster than anyone could follow. None could track him.

He felt a draft. He turned and went utterly and completely cold. Across the darkness, at the other end of the room, stood the Batman in all his impenetrable shadowy grandeur in front of Clark's humble screen door, staring intensely at the boy, rain falling behind him. Clark could only stare right back, absolutely petrified, his jaw hanging and trembling.

"Hello Clark." The Batman uttered simply over the thunder.

/

Alfred Pennyworth sat anxiously all on his own in the big empty Batcave, wanting very badly not to have to watch what his master was about to do that nice boy from Kansas.

He got up from the leather chair at the front of the head console and paced the infinite space, shoes tapping loudly on the rocky floor. The flickering of Diana's monitor caught his eye. Alfred shoved the memories of her distressing screams aside, trying to focus on something else. The Batman was indeed capable of terrible things.

A quiet, mechanical beeping indicated that someone was at Wayne Manor's front door. Thankful for the distraction, Alfred marched up the long stairway that was virtually invisible in the darkness, not thinking to check the monitors to see who in fact was ringing the doorbell.

Alfred jogged briskly into the study, not bothering to close the grand-father clock behind him, thinking he'd just tell his guests that Mr Wayne had already gone to bed and could not be reached. He was far too distracted to wonder who on earth would be ringing the doorbell of a house in the middle of nowhere at midnight.

Alfred opened the door, and barely began a greeting before an expert fist reached through the crack he'd opened and hit him in the side of the head. He crumpled to the floor, old man that he was, unconscious.

/

Diana sat in the bright white room, her knees pulled up into her chest and quivering disdainfully, her face a furious red and tears nearly in her eyes. She focused on the film playing at the side of the room, burying her smoldering emotions.

The film was coming to a close. The corrupt officials had captured the gruff vigilante, and they had sentenced him to death by something called 'hanging'. The vigilante now stood on a wooden platform in front of a large crowd of people who were screaming hatefully at him, his hands tied behind his back and one of the corrupt officials alternating between holy and lawful sounding words. The crowd continued to shout, even throwing vegetables at the vigilante, the tired old sheriff looking very sad. A large man in a black hood wrapped a loop of rope around the vigilante's neck, who bound his eyes shut and held his chin high.

"May you finally find peace in death." The head corrupt official said with a hint of satisfaction, epic, building music in the background.

A trap door fell out from under the vigilante's feet, and the film went absolutely dead silent as the man went through a short drop and a sudden stop. The crowd still visibly yelled, but there was only silence as the man hung there, neck bent unnaturally. It was spellbinding.

A loud crash pulled her away from the entrancing film, and then loud, heavy footsteps in the distance followed. When they stopped, a massive dent shot out from the door across her, and the room visibly shook.. Another strike at the door and it rocketed off its hinges. Diana just sat there, perplexed as a familiar hulking man in a black mask marched into her cell, a small Chinese woman short behind him.

Bane stood there for a moment, looking at her in bondage. "You look in an awful state." He sneered, the woman behind him setting a suitcase on the floor and opening it. "How about we fix you up a little?"

_/And here I find myself running out of time. Before what will be the last chapter for a while, I'd like to note that what you're seeing is not the final product, and I'm probably going to go back and do revisions once I return. I just wanted to get everything I had up before I left. Hope you've enjoyed. _

_The next chapter is sort of the half way point of the story, and it's kind of a climax in its own right. I hope it comes across as grand as I'd envisioned it. If it doesn't, well that's what revisions are for. -Roll/_


	12. Surgery

Clark Kent stood opposite the Batman, perpetually frozen in an absolute shock. His mind raced in every direction. Thousands of thoughts flew through his dismayed head, ninety-nine point nine percent of which involved running. Unfortunately, the stunning presence of the Batman kept him in his place just as any other man who'd faced down the drak knight.

"Planning a vacation?" The Batman nodded his head to the bag Clark carried over his shoulder. Clark couldn't answer, enthralled with the mass of shadow that stood in front of his screen door. "Escaping the rigors of a stressful city?" The Batman moved away from the porch, cape following behind him, heavy rain and thunder booming along with his voice. "Trying to get away from it all?"

Clark's lower lip trembled, and without realizing it, he dropped his bag.

"Oh, good." The Batman noted as it fell to the floor, then looked back up at Clark. "So you'll stay. That's great, because I've been meaning to have a talk with you."

Clark made a run for the porch but the Batman was already two steps ahead of him, his arm whipped out from under his cape to the side and grapple in his hand. The Batman fired towards the porch before Clark made his first step, but Clark's subsequent steps moved at a pace that an eye wouldn't stand a chance at following. Clark was at the screen door before the Batman had even known he'd moved, but then again, so was the grapple.

Just as Clark took off the night porch and into the dark, raging sky, the cord of the grapple wrapped around his ankle. The Batman, for whom a millisecond had yet to pass, was pulled harshly by his grapple out of the room, following at a wire's length an airborne Clark Kent.

The Batman had been well aware of Clark Kent's inhuman speed, and there was a brief gratification in knowing he had anticipated correctly in firing his grapple towards the porch: where Clark was going to be instead of where he was. Now, wind whipping at him and rain spraying his face, The Batman pushed down on a second button, and Clark hollered out as an electrical current ran through the grapple, up the cord and into him. He fell like a bird shot out of the sky, falling slowly before smashing onto the gravelly roof of a building. The Batman dropped far more gently a moment later, landing in a crouch and his cape melting into the shadowy ground in every direction around him, staring thoughtfully at the fallen Clark as the rain rolled right off him.

"Come on Clark, you're stronger than that." The Batman whispered and somehow managed to make it perfectly clear despite the heavy rainfall, standing to his full height as Clark used the nearest wall to help himself climb to his feet, gasping deep, painful breaths. The Batman only watched him indifferently, the wind atop the building whipping his cape only slightly, his entire body completely invisible beneath it. "You really don't look that well," The Batman commented as Clark made his way to his feet, still supporting himself against the slippery wall. "You should probably be getting a little more sun."

Clark looked up almost childishly at the dark figure, like a boy staring up at the monster in the closet, shoulders sagging with every breath.

"I know who you are, Kent." The Batman said simply, utterly terrifying as he got to his point. "I know where you're from, I know what you've done, and most importantly, I know what you can do..."

"Why are you doing this?!" Clark pleaded with the Batman, but it may has well have been with the world. "I'm innocent! I don't deserve any of this!"

The Batman said nothing for a long moment, an empty shadow. "June 19th, two years ago, Smallville Kansas." He said plainly, and Clark almost lost his balance as his heart completely sunk. "Hottest day the state of Kansas had ever had." The Batman continued, keeping a safe distance between himself and the boy. The first move could not be his own. "There was a fire at a local diner. The entire staff, two seniors, and three local high school students died. Probably the most notable thing the town had ever seen, aside from maybe an unexpected meteor shower eighteen years before it. There were no fingerprints, no evidence of arson. Witnesses claimed to have seen a bright red light shoot out into the sky beforehand. Police called it an electrical fire and closed the case. Bad wiring, they said. Autopsies said something different."

Clark slid down the wall and onto the floor, eyes wet and startled.

"The burn marks on eight of the thirteen people who died in that fire couldn't be measured by any know degree." The Batman explained, taking calm calculated steps towards the boy. He cut through the rain and into Clark like a knife. "Specific regions of the bodies had been completely melted out. Fire couldn't have done it. The wounds were too precise and thin, almost like the people had been cut through by a branding knife. Similar to the effect experimental high energy lasers have down in the military, but far too advanced for anyone to suspect fowl play. Just another Smallville unsolved mystery."

"No..." Clark shook his head desperately.

"There was one survivor of the 'Smallville Hell' as it came to be called." The Batman continued the story, piercing right into Clark's head. "He was found in front of the building, covered in soot, in a state of shock, but without any wounds. Town knew him. Good grades, good looks, good kid. No possible M.O. Worked for the school paper. He was pretty shaken up when they found him. Naturally, since he wasn't hurt at all, people started to get suspicious, but the police had already shut the case. Town started making noise, though. They demanded a more elaborate investigation, and they almost got one. Suspect, however, could not be reached for questioning. No one knew where he'd gone, not even his folks. Or at least that's what they said..."

"Please..." Clark begged meekly, actually tearful. "Please...it was an accident..."

"Now this kid..." The Batman carried forward mercilessly. "Most people don't know that he found his way to Gotham. Lives in a small apartment by himself and majors in Journalism at the University of Gotham City. Pays for tuition by working for a small diner near the tracks called Sam's. Owner died recently."

"You don't understand..." Clark turned away and shook his head defiantly.

"You killed them." The Batman finally hit the nail on the head. "All of them. I know you did. You're a menace. You're not going to get away with it, and it is _never_ going to happen again."

"I didn't mean too!!!" Clark screamed back furiously, and the world seemingly quaked along with him.

The Batman only stood there, unshaken, a head atop a mass of shadow that rain dared not touch.

"Do you really think it makes a difference?" He whispered, and he almost sounded sympathetic. "They're still dead, aren't they? You killed them Clark, and whether or not the will to do it was there is irrelevant. Tell me, does it make you any less dangerous either way?"

"I wouldn't..." Clark beseeched.

"And what happens when you have another 'accident'?" The Batman tilted his head, every word masterfully manipulative, toying with the boy's emotions. "What happens when there's more? How many others have to die before you surrender yourself, how long until someone like me or worse has had enough of it and makes you? You think you can find happiness with something like me in the way? You can run as much as you want, but I can promise you I'll be two steps ahead of you, waiting for you at your every stop. Or you can confront it now, meet the judge and jury right here on this rooftop. Either way, I'm here to pass sentence on you, Clark."

Clark looked around himself, closed in on every side by skyscrapers. Except of course for the patch of sky behind the Batman. Clark couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it that way.

"So what's it going to be, Clark?" The Batman cut into his mind once more. "You going to run from me for the rest of your life, however long that may be, or are you going to get me out of your way right here and now? Nobody knows but me, I can promise you that. I'm your only loose end. With me out of the way, you can hide and no one would ever be able to find you. But can you do it again? Can you force me out of your way?"

Clark took deep breaths, steadying himself and standing to his full height.

"That's what I thought." The Batman sneered contemptuously, the touch of a button invisible beneath the second shadow that was his cape. He invited him forward with a simple nod of his head. "Well let's get it over with, then. Come on. I'll make it quick."

With a visceral roar, Clark rocketed forward faster than the naked eye could follow, fist pulled back as the Batman whipped his cape out behind him, looking like a black star atop the building. One good punch would be enough to put him away.

Before Clark could throw it, the Batman was already upon him, fist buried in his abdomen. Clark felt something then he'd never expected to: agony. He felt cold and feverish all at once, just about paralyzed in a cold sweat. He nearly collapsed, falling against the Batman to support himself. The Batman only looked down at him, mist floating up and illuminating his grim face to a glowing green.

"You thought I wouldn't figure it out, Clark?" The Batman whispered almost sadistically, leaning into the boy's ear. Clark barely managed to gurgle, clutching the Batman's cape and feeling like he'd been shot, unable to bolster his own weight.

The Batman backhanded the boy, and Clark shot off his feet, hitting the gravel hard like a bag of bricks. He looked up shakily with a busted lip, his vision a blur as The Batman marched slowly, purposefully towards him, green mist spilling from his violently blazing emerald fists.

"Bet you weren't expecting that." The Batman shrugged, every step a tolling of the bell. "It's not like it was hard. After that night in the alley, I'd have been blind not to see it. Unfortunately for you, and despite my namesake, I am anything but."

Clark managed to get to his feet, and he took off skywards, but the Batman had anticipated it. He kicked himself off the wall and lifted himself into the air, wrapping his arms around the boy's waist and tackling him back down to the ground.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" The Batman hissed, grabbing Clark's head by the hair in both hands and lifting him off his back. Clark screamed as the jagged green slivers on The Batman's hands seared against his face. "It's like fire, I can tell. Burning, blistering, scorching. You're like a piece of meat."

The Batman drove his knee up into Clark's face. He groaned loudly, his neck whipping back as he fell forward onto his chest.

"What's it like," The Batman thought aloud, pacing around a Clark who struggled to get to his knees, his right eye swollen shut from a new laceration. "Being like you your whole life and then finding yourself here like this?"

The Batman kneeled and drove an expert fist into the small of Clark's back. He hollered loudly in pain.

"It must be terrible." The Batman continued, standing back up to his feet. "Feeling all that strength and vigor fading away. I should feel bad, but I doubt you would have had things gone the way you'd wanted them to. Must be humbling."

He soccer kicked the boy in the gut. Clark crumpled, moaning.

Clark roared and tossed a desperate punch, but the Batman sidestepped it and caught him by the wrist. He twisted the boy's arm harshly and drove his foot down into his shoulder. Something snapped as Clark fell back into gravel, and he screamed again.

"Pace yourself, Kent." The Batman warned as Clark struggled vainly. "At this rate you're not going to have any bones left."

Clark still writhed, trying futilely to force the Batman to release his arm.

"You don't get it, do you Clark?" The Batman asked, raising his voice and jerking the boy's arm for another scream. "This isn't a fight. It's not a battlefield you're on, it's an operating table." He kicked the boy across the face. "I'm dissecting you, Clark. You're just another carcass under the knife."

Another kick.

"You're one hell of a specimen, though." The Batman shook his head. "Unlike anything I've ever seen. I'll probably look back at this little experiment fondly. At first, I figured you and that Diana were the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, but no, you're something completely new. There's nothing human about you."

The Batman paused and contemplated, watching the boy bleed and convulse under the gentle green glow.

"Maybe that's not true." He muttered. "Maybe I'm missing the point. It's just science, Clark, I hope you know. Nothing personal. Honestly, you seem like a nice enough kid, but the hazard you present can't and won't be ignored."

"Why are you doing this..." He murmured weakly.

"Don't make this any harder." The Batman sighed. "You've got guts, and I respect that. I'd say this is hurting me more than it's hurting you, but I don't think you'd really appreciate being condescended like that. I'm still here to teach, though."

He grabbed the boy by the collar in one hand, dragging him along behind him as he made his way to the edge of the rooftop. He lay Clark there, hanging his upper body over the side of the building. Clark was too out of it to register any consciousness of his surroundings.

"I hope you're paying attention." Said the Batman, kneeling down close to Clark as to make sure he heard. "Because there's a lesson buried in all this. Oh yes, I'm not just here to pound you into atoms, I'm here to brief you on some simple rules I live my life by." He grabbed the boy by the chin and jerked him slightly, forcing him to watch. "Rule number one: there is no madness for the sake of madness. Even now, this has purpose. You're learning that no one, not even gods like you, can get away with everything. Are you listening, Kent?!" The Batman shook him again and Clark managed to kick back into consciousness, achieving panic. "Rule number two: no one is more important than those people down there." The Batman grabbed him by the hair and made him look down at the streets. "No matter how derelict, no matter how ravaged, each and every one of them has the potential to be great. Every death is the death of someone who could have changed the world, and that's why it's my life, my very mission preserving that capacity for good. Excuse me while I break you."

The Batman lifted him off the edge of the roof and slammed him cruelly into the wall. He grabbed him by the throat, and drove his head repeatedly into the brick, Clark choking and gagging all the while.

Clark smacked uselessly at the wraith's arm as he jerked him by the neck and slammed him down into the gravel, strangling the life from him callously. Clark hit the man's limb as strong as he could, but the Batman's arm remained as straight and as stone-cold as his face. Blackness took Clark shortly.

For awhile, there was only darkness. Then, with a sore, tired cough, Clark blinked back into existence. The Batman stood back turned to him, removing the violent green gloves from his hands and hiding them somewhere within his belt or cape. Clark was so beaten up he couldn't even begin to understand.

"And here we find ourselves at rule number three." The Batman explained, turning his head only slightly to look over his shoulder at the boy. "I hope you were paying attention during rule number two, because it has a lot to do with this one. As every being has the facility to do good, consequently, every death is a tragedy, and one that none should suffer. You're being punished because you broke that rule. Lucky for you though, I'm not about to break it just for the sake of trying to balance it all out. You owe more eyes than you can pay, anyway.

"Now you're probably going to pass out soon, so I'll try to make rule number four a quick one." The Batman said simply, at least part of the menace withheld. "Since every being has the potential to do good, it's only fair that they also have unlimited potential to do any number of awful, terrible things. Being what you are, this potential is greater in you than in anyone else. Maybe I'm just being naive, but I believe that it basically comes down to choice. We choose who we're going to be. Destiny, fate and all those other fabrications are just the excuses we make. At the core of it all, we are responsible for who we are, for which side of the coin we're going to live our lives on. Clearly, you haven't made any conscious decision to lean either way. So, I want you to remember tonight, Clark... in all the years to come... in your most private moments... I want you to remember my hand at your throat... I want you to remember the one man who beat you..." The Batman paused, and turned around to face the boy, who's eyes were beginning to roll backwards. He kneeled down in front of him and grabbed his chin, forcing him to see eye to eye. His daunting, terrifying demeanor was back in spades. "If you EVER even set another foot on the wrong side of the line, tonight will be nothing in comparison to what I'll do to you. I'm not exaggerating in saying that you'll beg me to bend rule number three just once for you."

The Batman tossed the boy's head backwards and onto the gravel, utterly comatose. He stood to his full height, reaffirming his general-purpose gloves. A job well done, all things considered. Plan worked and flowed flawlessly, and he was now aware that if it were necessary, he'd be perfectly capable of taking out Kent. Not that the boy would try anything after tonight. A successful experiment, he thought, clenching and unclenching his fists. For the first few hits, it had been like punching rock. Thankfully, Clark had softened soon enough.

He heard something like thunder but different in the black clouds then. He turned his head in every direction, looking past the rain and lightening. Nothing there.

He heard something cut the air in the distance, behind a sky scraper, and he whipped himself around to face it. In the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he'd seen a red streak. He heard that thunder again and he pivoted around in time to catch something of a rocket that grabbed him by the throat and lifted him forwards off the rooftop and high above the busy streets.

The Batman clutched the single arm that strangled him, grinding his teeth and his face cringed as he looked down at his attacker, who held him at arm's length overhead, floating above the street and between buildings. She pulled her fist back, and struck him harder than anything he'd ever expected to live through.

He shot backwards like a bullet through a gun, shattering a window and crashing through a floor of an abandoned office building before finally skidding to a stop on a massive, empty dilapidated floor. He stared up from his bed of slivers at the hole he'd left in what now had become the ceiling, before rolling away as the section of floor he had found himself upon gave way beneath him. His heart pounded uncontrollably in his ear. Diana. She'd escaped. That was impossible, this wasn't right. He wasn't ready for this.

She came down after him, and he managed to stumble to his feet in time to cross-block a straight punch. It did him no good, though. He rocketed back off his feet and through a wooden support-pillar in the distance, hitting the floor sliding and barely rolling off any of the impact.

_Sloppy. You should have seen it coming._

"How dare you..." She hissed maliciously, walking a straight line towards him as he forced himself to his hands and knees. She looked different, he noticed in his haze. Change of clothes. The gown had been replaced by some sort of red, blue and gold uniform. Were those stars he was seeing? He couldn't tell well enough to know the details.

_Focus!_

He shot up to his feet and threw out a desperate spinning hook-kick, but she ducked and caught him by the leg and abdomen, easily lifting and slamming him hard down through a second wooden pillar. He made no sound, rolling out of the way and onto his feet when she went to stomp him into the ground, but she was still quicker, straight punching him hard in the solar-plexus and again sending him hurtling backwards through the air and onto his back.

"I will not tolerate such disrespect!" She shouted furiously at him, but he couldn't hear her, rolling onto his stomach, his one arm trembling with strain as he pushed himself off the floor.

_Get up. Pain is irrelevant, pain isn't real, pain doesn't matter..._

"No mere man has right to make a prisoner of me!" She continued, hateful. "I will not allow you to do it again to my kind. No mere man will ever humiliate an Amazon, or talk down at me as you did! None shall ever put me and mine into bondage!"

She swung her leg back and kicked him in the ribs. He flew off the floor and smashed into an edge between the ceiling and a support pillar. He fell to the floor, pillar bending and dropping small chunks of plaster and dust from the ceiling on top of him. He felt blood shoot up from his lungs and into his mouth.

_Don't you dare give up any ground. Don't you dare let her see you bleed..._

He swallowed as much of it as he could, hoping she mistake it for a busted lip instead of an injured organ. It was bitter.

"What makes you think you have any place in all this?" She hissed. "What sign was given to you? Why don't you scream when I wound you? What is it that makes you keep going, pretending like it doesn't affect you? You think I can't hear your pounding, dying pulse, or the snapping of your bones? You think I can't see the blood spilling freely from you?!"

He looked at his side. She'd opened an old knife wound, and it was seeping out of his suit. He swore, and she kicked him across the room again before he could get to a knee.

He landed better this time, bouncing off a pillar and landing on a hand and a knee. He took deep breaths, his mouth open and his teeth locked shut, a single line of blood and saliva dripping from the corner of his red mouth.

"Is that really all it takes?" She nodded knowingly when the first drop of red hit the floor. "I think I understand it now. The cape, the heroics, the mask. You need it. You can't stand the thought that you don't matter. You despise how fragile and insignificant your humanity makes you. You can't accept the thought that it's all you are. That's why you hide behind all this shadow and monster's clothing, isn't it? The boundaries of mortality suffocate you. You need to feel like you can make a difference." She reached down and grabbed the edge of his mask "It's just delusions of grandeur. Beneath it all, you're still only..."

He swatted her hand away from his mask, shooting to his feet and backhanding her across the face harder than he'd ever let himself hit anyone. Her head barely whipped and she didn't make a sound as he followed with a roundhouse that struck her in the side of the head. He went to give her a right hook but she stopped him in mid-step, catching him by the arm. She gave him a backhand of her own, holding tightly to him. He shot sideways none the less, the arm of his suit torn off and left in her hands. He took this hit better than any before it, rolling off the impact and into a crouch, reaching under his cape for a Baterang, but she was already flying forward, and she had his weapon wielding arm in her grasp before he could make use of it, crushing his wrist in her hand.

He made no sound, only shaking slightly and scowling that bloody scowl while his bones cracked loudly between her fingers. She swung her leg around and kicked him down across the face, smashing his head into and at least partly through the fragile wooden floor and tearing away his remaining sleeve.

"Your toys can't help you now..." She hissed, pulling his cape over him and stealing away his belt. He began to struggle, but she drove her knee up into him, launching him upwards and tearing away his cape. She followed him into the air, tossing the cape and belt aside and striking him hard with an uppercut that sent him flying backwards, hitting the floor and sliding right into a wall. A concussion had been gnawing away at his cognizance for what felt like hours now. Things were getting far harder to see.

He refused the darkness. He'd been its master for years, and he wasn't about to submit to it now. Death... rest was not an option.

The pain was getting harder to ignore. He tried to concentrate, tried to make use of all the tricks and skills he'd learned to neutralize it, but he found himself forgetting them as blood trickled down over his eye. The right half of his mask had been cracked and a chunk had fallen off. His face had been badly splintered from the wood of the floor, small slivers buried in his skin. None of the cuts were longer or deeper than a couple of centimeters, but they were numerous. He took deep, laboring breaths. His ribs were crushed.

_Get up._

He couldn't acknowledge it. He couldn't even let himself think of the injuries, or he'd start remembering stats, and hypothesizing how many minutes or seconds he could press on without medical attention. To think that what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him was he knew an ignorant philosophy, but for now it was a necessary one. Knowing for a fact he couldn't survive wasn't going to help him get through this.__

He shook his head, and rolled onto his stomach, blood dripping to the floor from at least four individual places on his exposed chin, but he didn't bother to count and make sure. He pressed one arm against the wall and pulled himself to his feet. She was not amused.

"What's the point?!" She demanded, frustrated with him. "Why keep fighting me when its only going to bring you another wound, another broken bone?! What is it you expect to do?! Do you really think you can beat me?! Will the world be any better if you strike me down?! Are you so vain, so proud as to not accept defeat from a better?!"

_Get up. She is not a better..._

She threw a punch, but she missed when he rolled under it, instead smashing her fist elbow deep into the wall. Moving faster than his body should have permitted in his state, he kicked her in the ribs, again and again. Finally, she broke free and grabbed his leg in both hands, swinging him one-hundred-eighty degrees and back into the wall. He crumpled against the impact and fell to the floor, dust and plaster falling down on top of him, but she did not let go.

She took two steps, lifting him off the ground, swinging him around her before releasing . He hurtled, spinning uncontrollably through the air. His skull smashed bluntly with a sickening crack into a concrete support beam, his body wrapping around it before he dropped to the floor. He was unmoving for a moment, and Diana smiled, a sigh of relief escaping her. Until of course he started to shake again, lurching as he tried to push himself off the floor and blood spilling heedlessly down his partially exposed face.

_To be great is to go on, to go on is to go forward, to go forward is to return..._

His mask was fractured, a hard edge digging into his face. It had to be removed, he could feel the wound. He grabbed the cowl from a bottom flap, and tore it from his head. At least she wouldn't get to do it.

She scowled furiously, and then noticed his belt and cape laying at the center of the room. A vague idea formed in her head, and her smile returned as she picked off a pair of his sleek, meticulously crafted handcuffs. She walked slowly, purposefully towards him. He was turned away, on both hands and a knee when she drove her foot down into the small of his back. He crashed back down into the floor, and his head whipped back in obvious anguish. She imagined he must have swallowed his tongue as not have let a sound escape him.

"See how you like it..." She leant over and hushed, grinding her heel in his spine, clicking the handcuffs around his wrists. "Scream for me..."

He only trembled and grit his teeth, stubborn to his last gasp, which may have been approaching. Defiant until the bitter end.

_Get up..._

With her own annoyed scream, she kicked him again in the side. He soared again, and crashing out a window once more came into open air, falling a couple stories into an alley. He rolled with it, scrapping his bare arms against the pavement before smacking the back of his head against a dumpster. It hadn't been as bad as he'd expected on the way down. Perhaps he was getting numb.

The rain fell on his face, washing away the blood. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up to see a single watery red stream falling to the ground.

_This is no way to die..._

She floated down to the ground, landing on the pavement lighter than a feather. "I don't understand." She barely hushed over the rain, but somehow he heard her. "I just don't get it. There are millions in this city alone that are exactly the same as you, billions around the world, but none of them would do what you're doing. No one would even think of it. So why do you do it? What separates you, what makes you keep getting up?" She gestured vaguely at him. "What's the point? What are you trying to accomplish?"

He was almost to his feet, but before he could move, before he could think, her hand was at his throat, shoving him into the dumpster. She punched him across the face over and over, and with each strike he staggered to the side and nearly to the ground, but she kept pulling him back up.

"Don't you get it?!" She screamed furiously, the rain falling over her and a blank expression on his red, reeling face. "Don't you realize you're dying?! Can't you see that I'm killing you?! Why get up?! Why make it worse?! Do you think you're fighting for something more, that you have a place in the grand scheme of things?! Can you even tell me what it is?! Is it because you think you can make a difference, that you can make this filth that is you and your race any better?! Do you think you can offer them any protection from this harsh reality, do you think they'll even remember you for it?! Can you honestly say that at the end of the day, the world will be a better place for you having endured?!"

"No..." He muttered weakly, eyes to the floor as he took deep exhausted breaths.

"Then why?!" She demanded, squeezing his throat and whipping his head backwards. "Why fight when it's never going to matter?! Why fight only to die?! Why be a hero when there's no glory or satisfaction, when your own people will despise you?! Why not spend your time trying to make yourself happy, instead of tormenting yourself to make it better for people who's lives remain in shambles no matter what you do?! What's the point of trying?! Why why why why why why?!?!"

She drove him again into the dumpster, her grip tightening, and he writhed, gritting his teeth. Trembling, he looked at her, stubborn, spiteful. "Because I need to try..." He answered simply, beaten far beyond an inch of his life. "Because it's right..."

Furious, she turned and threw him into the wall behind her. The brick cracked and he crumbled to the floor, but he was already pushing himself back up as soon as he hit it. He lifted his heavy, weary head, and noticed a thin golden rope, tied into a lasso in her hands. It nearly glowed in the rain and dark night. Where she'd gotten it, he hadn't the foggiest.

"Do you know what this is?" She asked quietly.

He didn't answer, forcing his screaming muscles to work. There was no point, but that didn't really matter.

"It's old." She explained. "Ancient. Forged by the greatest of Themsyscira craftswoman from my mother's girdle."

_What is it with her and that girdle?_

"It's very well made." She noted, resting it in her hands. "Unbreakable, and infinitely long. Can your mind look far enough past your sciences to grasp that?"

He was beginning to dislike this Diana, princess of Amazons.

"Now here's what makes it such a powerful, unique weapon." She continued. "It is purity. It will permit no darkness, no dishonesty, no injustice. It is the divine, perfect right. No will can deny it or break it, for it is beyond the grasp of the conscious. To be enthralled in its glow is to be under my command."

The Batman barely heard a word, fighting against constant blackouts, but he was fairly certain he'd caught the gist of it. His brain was working far slower than he'd have liked it to. Then there was something binding around his throat, and all at once everything stopped. The will, the calculation, the rationality, the choice: it was gone. All of it. All at once, there was nothing he could do. That familiar terror he hadn't felt since he was a child was all that remained.

He could feel himself kicking and fighting as she dragged him out of the alley, the golden cord burning the flesh of his neck and choking the life from him. The rain stung against his wounds, but he couldn't think. His brain would not function. He could only feel. To react was beyond his grasp. The helplessness was horrifying.

There was a sudden stop, and he found himself beneath the fluorescent glow of an overhanging street lamp, which felt strangely familiar. He made his way to his knees, looking down at the blood on the ground, spilling into the sewers, and the crack upon which his left foot rest. Same sewer. Same crack. Same foot. Very familiar. It was happening again...

No. His own blood. Not their's. Not their's.

There was blackness and rain all around him, as if the small circle of white light falling down on him from the lamp were all that shine in the world. At the end of the street, through the blackness were the decayed ruins of the Monarch Theater. He was sure of it.

_Very familiar indeed..._

"You will be a symbol." Something red blue and golden said from the darkness. He was suddenly very aware of the lasso...no, noose around his throat, and how it climbed up into the bright light of the lamp before coming back down on the other side.

"The dawn of a new era, where fear and shadow won't be necessary."

The rope pulled hard once at his throat and lifted him to the tips of his toes, choking him mercilessly.

"But for one era to begin, another must die."

Another tug, and he was off his feet and hanging from his neck under the lamp. He pressed his feet against the post to relieve some of the pressure, but it was wet and hard to hold on to. His one foot kept slipping.

"Now," said Diana stepping into the light beneath him and into his sight. She looked poised, unmoved by his writhing, bloody and bound body. "Is no longer your time." She said, looking up at him. He stared back at her trembling, furious, spiteful, and any number of other emotions she couldn't count.

"Die." She ordered simply.

For a brief moment he just looked at her, tips of his toes clutching desperately to the lamppost. They fell away, and he just hung there unmoving.

She stood in the rain watching him for what was probably a minute, just to make sure. He didn't budge. Just gently swayed back and forth, turning slightly whenever the rope twisted, head hanging heavily forwards. The rope did not glow golden. It looked more plain than she'd ever seen it.

Eventually, she left. Someone would find him sooner or later, she figured. There would be a news story, an initial, though minor shock. Nothing important. He didn't matter enough.

She didn't understand the significance of that alley, that lamp, that theater across the street. There was something about it all that made her shiver. She'd felt it when she grabbed the rope. She dismissed it as the rain and turned the corner.

For the second time in his life, Bruce Wayne found himself completely and deeply helpless under that same lamp, in front of that same alley, bathed in that same hollow light, blackness all around him and utterly, hopelessly alone.

-----------------

Lex Luthor sat patiently in his plush leather chair deep inside his war room, content smile on his face and a bounce in his foot. Bane leant against a command post, and Shiva sat perched on top of one across, each equally impatient, starring down their employer, who only kept on smiling, obviously aware of something they weren't.

There was a soft drop behind the leather chair, and Luthor swivelled to see Diana, princess of the Amazons in his door frame, a bloody, beaten Clark dragging behind her. She lifted him by the scruff of his shirt and tossed him at Luthor's feet.

Luthor beamed an ugly smile. There was nothing fake about it.

/

Alfred Pennyworth looked up through a dizzy concussion at the main monitor of the Batcave, a single straight red line loudly sustaining a single beep: The Batman's pulse.

Alfred Pennyworth nearly collapsed.

_/Well, that'll be all for awhile. After two shorter chapters, I hit you upside the head with a huge one. Sorry to leave you on such a cliff-hanger, but this is pretty much the big turning point of the story. I'm glad I made it this far before going on hiatus. Hopefully, you're hooked by now. Spread and share the word if you'd like.-Roll/_


	13. If you're wondering

Because you care

If there's anyone out there who still cares, the reason I haven't posted any new chapters to Trinity is simply because I've stopped writing it... in this format. I've adapted it into a screenplay, which I've been working away on like a japanese beaver for months now. If you're still interested, submit a review with your e-mail address in it, and I'll send you a draft. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, and I would forever cherish any criticism or suggestions you can make to help me improve it. Sooner or later, when I'm satisfied with the screenplay and think its the best it can be, I'll post it on such webpages as Batman Fan Films and Blue Tights Adventure Network. Then, if it does well there... who knows?


	14. Another Notice

This is the author speaking. Feeling nostalgic, I dropped by earlier tonight in hopes of getting reconnected with the roots of Trinity. I'd forgotten anyone other than me ever actually cared about this thing. Anyway, if YOU care, the current iteration of the screenplay can be found at /www,simplyscripts,com/scripts/Trinity3.pdf

If you have time, give it a look. Feel free to tell me your thoughts. Criticism would be much appreciated.

- _More than a year later, Alex McKinnon is beginning to wonder if he'll ever be satisfied with this story._


	15. Final Notice

To those who might be interested, you can check out my most up to date pieces by googling Stumbling, Bumbling and Mumbling. Besides my blog, you'll soon be able to check out some of my feature screenplays, including 'Trinity' and 'Wonder Woman.'


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